Stonebreakers: Film Screening and Roundtable Discussion
Wednesday 13 March 2024 

HRC report – Joanne Lee

Internal webpage: Stonebreakers (warwick.ac.uk)
Coventry Cathedral webpage: Stonebreakers - Film Screening - Coventry Cathedral

On Wednesday 13^th March, Valerio Ciriaci (director) and Isaak J. Liptzin (producer) visited Warwick as part of their UK tour to present their documentary film Stonebreakers (Awen Films, 2022). Thanks to the generous support from the HRC Visting Speaker’s Fund and from the Warwick Institute of Engagement, along with contributions from departments of History, PAIS, SCAPVC and the SMLC, we were able to stage two separate events: an afternoon on-campus event open to staff and students, and an evening event in the Chapter House theatre of Coventry Cathedral open to members of the public.

Valerio Ciriaci and Isaak J. Liptzin co-founded Awen Films in 2012 and Stonebreakers is their third documentary feature film. The documentary chronicles the fight around historical memory in the US that exploded in 2020 during the George Floyd protests and the presidential election. It interrogates understandings of national narratives and foundational myths (in particular Columbus and the Founding Fathers) and explores debates around contested monuments, statues and landmarks. The film premiered in 2022 at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, where it won three awards.

The afternoon screening and roundtable panel discussion took place in the Cinema Room of the Faculty of Arts Building with an audience of around 40 staff and students and was followed by a drinks reception.In the evening, a similar free event took place in the Chapter House theatre of Coventry Cathedral with around 30 in attendance. Although scheduled on a busy day in the last week of term, the film drew in a varied audience with interests in US politics, racial justice, decolonising movements, historical memory and documentary filmmaking.

The film-screenings (70 minutes) were followed by a roundtable panel discussion – the aim of which was not only to allow the filmmakers to explain the ideas behind the making of the film and respond to questions from the audience, but also to bring them into dialogue with researchers and cultural activists who specialise in different aspects of US history and politics, questions of memory and memorialisation, and cultural policy and inclusion.

Afternoon panelists included:

Jess Eastland-Underwood: a final year PhD Student from PAIS whose research looks at how everyday understandings of the concept of ‘the economy’ in the USA mobilised the anti-lockdown and George Floyd protests during the Covid-19 pandemic. Her published work has looked at interpretations of the economic ideology of the Founding Fathers in the Tea Party movement as well as the way popular conceptions of ‘the market’ reproduce white supremacy.

Alison Cooley: Professor in Classics at Warwick, Deputy Head of Classics, and Director of the Humanities Research Centre. Her interest in contemporary debates surrounding statues and memorials stems from her research into the cultural and political aspects of the Roman world. She has a forthcoming chapter on the destruction of ancient monuments from Pharaonic Egypt to Imperial Rome: 'Control: The destruction of monuments', in D. Agri and S. Lewis (eds.) Cultural History of Media: Antiquity (Bloomsbury)

Lara Ratnaraja: an independent cultural consultant who specialises in diversity, innovation, leadership, collaboration and cultural policy within the cultural, the HE and digital sectors. She co-produces a series of cultural leadership programmes for people from diverse backgrounds linked to geographical place and also curates a digital Conference called Hello Culture. Her projects include working with the 8 Welsh National Arts Companies to develop a cultural framework for diversity co-designed with creative stakeholders and residents.Lara is on the board of Compton Verney and is Co-Chair of the Coventry Biennial. She is also on the UK Council for Creative UK and the Equality Monitoring Group for Arts Council Wales.

Evening panelists included:

David Wright: David teaches and writes about cultural policy and the creative industries in the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies at Warwick. His recent work has concerned campaigns for statues and memorials to figures from twentieth-century popular culture. He is currently writing a book for Liverpool University Press: Celebrity and Public Art: Memorialising Popular Culture and his recent open access article in the European Journal of Cultural Studies concerned nostalgia and statues to comedians in the North of England.

Ras Emmanuelle Henry Cottrell: founder of I&I Collective – an international collective of promoters, producers, performers, DJs, artists & activists. One of his recent projects at St Mary’s Guildhall in Coventry involved exploring the history of the American civil rights activist Frederick Douglass who visited the city in 1847 where he delivered three lectures as part of his anti-slavery campaigns.

Lydia Plath: Associate Professor of US History at Warwick, where she specialises in the history of racism and racial violence. Her research projects have investigated the representation of slavery in twentieth and twenty-first century American cinema. Her teaching centres on African American history and her module ‘America in Black and White’ won the inaugural Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Inclusive Curricula Prize. Lydia is one of the facilitators of the Tackling Racial Inequality at Warwick Staff Development Programme.

Both afternoon and evening screenings led to lively and insightful panel discussions in which participants debated the quest for representation within the film: was the struggle really about whether a statue or monument should stand, or was the struggle for territorial rights and political space more important? Why do certain stories become central to the national narrative while other stories and voices are marginalised? How can we incorporate activism into our teaching and research? Questions to the director and producer also explored cinematography and considered how much of the intensity and beauty of the film derives from the choice to avoid a didactic voice-over, the use of music to build tension and the powerful juxtaposition of imagery. At both events, we really needed an extra hour to fully explore these aspects!

The events were successful in bringing filmmakers together with researchers at Warwick and external collaborators while the subject of racial justice and political representation clearly resonated with both audiences. We hope to purchase the documentary for the library so that other members of the university can watch a film which makes a vital contribution to political debates about monuments, memorialisation and constructions of national narratives. We extend our thanks and appreciation to Valerio and Isaak for coming to Warwick and sharing their film with us – we eagerly await their next film project!