Showroom Cinema is to host Sheffield’s first poet laureate and hip-hop artist, Otis Mensah to introduce a Doc/Nights screening of ‘Hale County, This Morning, This Evening’ and to perform some of his spoken word poetry on Monday 29 April.
One of the most essential documentary releases of the year, RaMell Ross’s ‘Hale County, This Morning, This Evening’ paints an inspired, intimate and lyrical portrait of African American lives in Hale County, Alabama.
Finding beauty and poetry in the everyday, the film is a hypnotic and visually astounding love letter to a community, and an exploration of the complex social construction of race in America.
Otis Mensah has been praised as “a young story-teller-rapper-poet with a talent for drawing the poetic from the everyday happenings in his life.” The film also finds the poetic in the everyday, and like Otis’s work, touches on experiences of growing up and coming of age, as well as themes of spirituality, community and family.
In the run up to the 26th highly-anticipated Doc/Fest festival, Doc/Nights presents the best new documentary cinema with special introductions, Q&As and panel discussions.
RaMell Ross was nominated for a 2019 Academy Award in the Best Documentary (Feature) category for his work on ‘Hale County This Morning, This Evening’ (2018). RaMell Ross is a cinematographer and director, whose previous work includes Independent Lens (1999). Prior to this, Ross attended Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where he played basketball as a point guard, later the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence where he studied visual arts, and then became a teacher of film at Brown University also in Providence.
Doc/Nights Presents: Hale County, This Morning, This Evening + Otis Mensah takes place at the Showroom Cinema on Monday 29 April at 18:00. Tickets are priced between £4.50 – £9.20 and are available online or from the Showroom Cinema Box Office, Tel 0114 275 7727.
