FILM SCREENING | Searching for Timbuctoo with Paul Miller

Join us for a film screening of Searching for Timbuctoo, with Filmmaker and Writer Paul Miller. We will screen the film and have an opportunity for questions and dialogue with Paul Miller, facilitated by Historian of the Albany African American History Project, Tricia Barbagallo.

 

 

FILM SYNOPSIS:

 

In 1846, in an effort to level a blow against racism, wealthy New York landowner and well-known abolitionist leader, Gerrit Smith, gave away 120,000 acres of wild land to nearly 3000 African-American families so that they could have the right to vote in the State of New York.

 

The land grants—what Smith called his ‘scheme of justice and benevolence,’ would bring together a diverse group of Black and White abolitionists, including a struggling sheep farmer named John Brown—all of whom would be willing to sacrifice either their fortune, their families, or even their fate for the cause of land and liberty.

 

It was a battle they waged from the ‘burned over district’ of central New York...to the corridors of power in Washington...and to the plains of ‘bleeding Kansas.’ They would either overthrow slavery or be forever changed in the act. What Smith could not know is that it would also lead one man to the brink of insanity, send another to the gallows, and help hurtle the nation towards a catastrophic civil war.

 

Searching For Timbuctoo reveals the hidden history of this long-lost community and follows SUNY-Potsdam archaeologist Dr. Hadley Kruczek-Aaron who, since 2009, has tried to unearth the elusive Timbuctoo settlement. Now, Dr. K-A and her team of students have been granted rare permission to break ground at a historic site: John Brown’s Farm and our cameras document their discoveries. Searching For Timbuctoo is the first feature-length documentary by writer/director Paul A. Miller.