Buck and the Preacher - film screening

In celebration of Juneteenth, join us for a free screening of the newly restored 1972 film BUCK AND THE PREACHER. With his rousingly entertaining directorial debut, Sidney Poitier, alongside actor-producer Harry Belafonte, helped rewrite the history of the western, bringing Black heroes to a genre in which they had always been sorely underrepresented. Combining boisterous buddy comedy with blistering, Black Power–era political fury, Poitier and a marvelously mischievous Belafonte star as a tough and taciturn wagon master and an unscrupulous, pistol-packing “preacher,” who join forces in order to take on the white bounty hunters threatening a westward-bound caravan of people recently emancipated from slavery. A superbly crafted revisionist landmark, Buck and the Preacher subverts Hollywood conventions at every turn and reclaims the western genre in the name of Black liberation. Event is free, but registration is highly recommended. Register at https://rb.gy/k90lz This event is part of Keene's Juneteenth celebrations put on by the City of Keene, Badger Balm, Monadnock International Film Festival, and Keene YMCA. Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of ending slavery in the United States. Though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863, it took two and a half years for slaves in the state of Texas to be told of their freedom. Juneteenth is the celebration of the day when all enslaved individuals became aware of their freedom.