Hamilton School Presents We Had been Right here

Movie Tells the Untold Historical past of Renaissance Europe’s Black Africans

Clinton, N.Y. – Hamilton School will current We Were Here, the untold historical past of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, on Thursday, Oct. 30, at 4:10 p.m. within the Kirner-Johnson Constructing’s Bradford Auditorium (KJ 125). Director Fred Kudjo Kuwornu, an Italian-Ghanian scholar, will focus on the movie following the screening.

Kudjo Kuwornu’s groundbreaking documentary reveals the missed presence of African figures in Renaissance Europe, difficult perceptions of artwork, historical past, and id, and uncovering the hidden presence of African and Black people, revealing their illustration in masterpieces by iconic artists of the time. The movie investigates how they got here to Europe and why they had been portrayed in work. It questions who they had been. Had been all of them servants and slaves? We Had been Right here challenges the standard narrative that has lengthy missed their significance within the works of celebrated Renaissance masters, telling the unknown distinctive tales of African-Europeans who had been princes, ambassadors, saints, artists, professors, and knights.

The movie’s multilingual journey spans the U.Okay., Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and France, providing a contemporary perspective on European artwork historical past and cultural heritage. The documentary options interviews with distinguished worldwide students of artwork historical past, historical past, and Black research, in addition to Black activists and artwork curators, offering a complete and nuanced view of this under-explored side of European historical past.

Amongst these highlighted in We Had been Right here are:

• Juan Latino, born a slave in Granada, Spain. He turned a famend scholar and poet, ultimately changing into a professor of Latin on the College of Granada within the sixteenth century.
• Juan de Pareja, a Spanish painter of African descent who was initially a slave and assistant to Diego Velázquez, who gained his freedom and have become a notable artist in his personal proper.
• Alexander de Medici, The Duke of Florence, was the primary Black head of state in trendy Western historical past. He was the illegitimate son of Lorenzo II de’ Medici and an African slave. He dominated Florence from 1531 to 1537.

Kuwornu labored with the manufacturing crew of Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna in Italy after which determined to analysis the unknown story of the 92nd Infantry Buffalo Troopers Division, which led him to provide and direct the Award-winning documentary Inside Buffalo (2010). In 2012 he launched 18 IUS SOLI, which examines multiculturalism in Italy and the query of citizenship for the a million youngsters of immigrants born and raised in Italy who haven’t been granted Italian citizenship. In 2019, Kuwornu launched his evocative movie, Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema. He’s the founding father of the Affiliation Range Italia, selling the significance of racial and ethnic variety in Italy and Europe by way of movie and different artwork kinds as instruments for constructing a extra inclusive society.