Bringing Cinema East of the Anacostia River. Washington, DC
Stories. Dialog. Life.
Our Mission
Southeast Cinema Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing stories, discussing ideas, and building community engagement through film screenings and cultural events hosted East of the Anacostia River.
Cinema for the People
Documentary Film Screening & Discussion
‘Black Zombie’
Directed by Maya Annik Bedward
“An act of reclamation. The rare documentary you want everyone you know to watch.”
- The Austin Chronicle
From the flickering screens of Hollywood horror, to the haunted cane fields of colonial Haiti, Black Zombie unearths the buried origins of the zombie, reclaiming it as a symbol of survival and spiritual resistance.
SYNOPSIS
Black Zombie digs beneath the blood-soaked spectacle of modern horror to uncover the zombie’s buried and unsettling origins. Long before it became associated with flesh-eating ghouls, the zombie was a living metaphor for slavery: not a monster, but the ultimate victim of colonial power. A symbol of stolen agency was recast as an object of fear, while Black spiritual traditions were distorted, sensationalized, and erased. Director Maya Annik Bedward traces the evolution of the zombie from colonial Haiti to contemporary Hollywood, reconsidering iconic films like White Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, and The Serpent and the Rainbow alongside archival footage, vérité scenes, and interviews with cultural historians, artists, and genre legends including Yves-Grégory Francois, Mambo Labelle Déesse, Slash, Tom Savini, and Zandashé Brown. Part cultural reckoning, part horror remix, Black Zombie exposes how a figure born from enslavement, spiritual belief, and resistance was transformed into one of pop culture’s most profitable monsters.
TICKETS AVAILABLE SOON!
SPECIAL EXHIBITION COMING SOON
Black Men in Cinema Posters: Progress, Power, Identity, and Design
Curated by Paul Grant and Damany Mathis
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Access to cinema is about more than entertainment — it’s about visibility, community, and cultural democracy.
