Humanitas: Watch Party and Discussion

We’ll host an online watch party of Humanitas, a film Jé Hooper produced with a grant from the American Ethical Union.  From 2-3 pm, Jé will be with us online to take questions and responses.

The film imagines the encounter between Felix Adler, founder of the first Ethical Culture Society, and W.E.B. Du Bois.   Bonus: some of the music is written and performed by Lindsey Wilson.

If that time is not good for you, watch this space for postings of other showings by other Ethical Societies which you are welcome to attend.

Felix Adler (Ritchie Szoke), the founder and philosopher of the Ethical Culture Movement, and W.E.B. DuBois (Joe Tolbert), the author of “the Souls of Black Folk” and activist-scholar, are re-imagined in this histo-contemporary retrospective of July 1900.

Throughout this experimental film, we journey with Adler and DuBois through a series of poetic prose, soulful music and choreo-movements, as they stir in one another justice through a new lens of nonreligious ethics, African-based spirituality, and civil philosophy.

DuBois, after completing a variety of lectures and books is endowed by the “spirit-of-rightness” with a new love for the intersectionality of Africaniety, where all lives can’t matter until black lives matter. As a result, his passion becomes contagious to anyone who comes in contact with his infectious conscious-kindness–his heart-work becomes the coloring of white spaces.

Through an encounter with DuBois, Adler “weighs the soul” of the young negro leader and establishes a life-changing relationship that is solidified at the first Pan-African Conference at the Westminster Hall in London.

Adler is also challenged by this consciousness, conflicted by the thoughts of other intellectuals, who reveal a hidden unethical, racist agenda for scholastic fame, and a refusal to acknowledge the true souls and spirits of black folks.

Director and Creator: Jé Hooper
Cinematographers: Orisha Photos & Chris CSpins Guzman
Photographer/Imaging: Brianna N. Rohlehr
Editors: Chris CSpins Guzman, Dwayne Gayle, & storäe michele
Musicians: Jadele McPherson & Lindsey Wilson
Set Director: Steven Styles Cobb