Film screening of ‘Belle’ and Closing Reception of Black History Month

The film ‘Belle’, is by award-winning Ghanaian filmmaker Amma Asante. It is inspired by the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle.

Her mother, Maria Belle, was an African slave in the British West Indies and her father was Sir John Lindsay, a British career naval officer who was stationed there. Lindsay took Belle with him when he returned to England in 1765, entrusting her upbringing to his uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, and his wife Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Mansfield.

“With ‘Belle’, Asante has succeeded in making a sweeping costume drama that confronts questions of race and gender head on — something that Merchant Ivory films rarely managed to do.”
(The Independent)

“A finely wrought tale of a woman out of time, a film that plays eloquently upon the heartstrings as it interweaves familiar personal intrigue with stirring social history.”
(The Observer)