In its first screening of the new year, the Brock University Film Society (BUFS) will showcase BlacKkKlansman, the remarkable true story of a black police officer who successfully infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan.
The film was brought to life by visionary filmmaker Spike Lee, with the production team behind the Academy-Award winning movie, Get Out. It will be screened Thursday, Jan. 17 at the Film House in the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in downtown St. Catharines.
Set in the early 1970s, amid the struggle for civil rights, BlacKkKlansman follows officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) as he poses as a racist extremist in order to gain insight into the notorious hate group.
Stallworth contacts the KKK and soon finds himself invited into its inner circle, even cultivating a relationship with David Duke (Topher Grace), the Klan’s unsuspecting Grand Wizard. With the undercover investigation growing ever more complex, Stallworth’s white colleague, Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), poses as Stallworth in face-to-face meetings with members of the KKK, gaining insider’s knowledge of a deadly plot. Together, Stallworth and Zimmerman team up to take down the organization whose real aim is to sanitize its violent rhetoric to appeal to the mainstream.
“It is no surprise that director Spike Lee prefers a hammer to a scalpel for this real-life drama, but his righteous fury is supplemented with a mature thoughtfulness that gives the proceedings the grim weight of history,” says Screen International.
Tickets for all BUFS shows are available at the Film House in the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre (PAC) on the evening of screenings. General admission is $9.50 or $7 for members, plus tax. Memberships are available through the Film House website.
Visit the BUFS web page for a full list of this season’s selections. A calendar of films coming to the PAC over the next few months is posted on the Film House website. Look for the red B that indicates a BUFS-hosted screening.
For more than 40 years, the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film has hosted the film society (previously known as a series) to bring some of the best in independent, international and Canadian cinema to St. Catharines.
