Search Museum of the Moving Image

Loading Events

SCREENING

The Underground Railroad: The Complete Series (Chapters 1–5)

Friday, Dec 31, 2021 at 12:30 pm

Location: Redstone Theater

Dir. Barry Jenkins. United States. 2021, 305 mins. DCP. With Thuso Mbedu, Chase W. Dillon, Joel Edgerton, Fred Hechinger, Peter Mullan, Mychal-Bella Bowman, Sheila Atim.

Academy Award–winning director Barry Jenkins’s mammoth adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Colson Whitehead is an extraordinary work of American visual art that demands to be seen in a theater. Chronicling Cora Randall’s desperate bid for freedom in the Antebellum South after she escapes a Georgia plantation for the rumored Underground Railroad, this ten-part saga all but reinvents the mini-series format, both expanding and compressing time in innovative fashion and employing expressionistic camera and editing that allows the viewer to experience the horrors of American history in frankly subjective ways. As in Whitehead’s book, Cora discovers the Railroad is no mere metaphor, but an actual network of trains hidden beneath the soil, a daring conceit that Jenkins uses to launch a magnum opus of magical realism.

Chapter 1: Georgia. When Caesar convinces Cora to escape from Randall Plantation in Georgia, their lives are irrevocably changed. They discover the impossible in an underground railroad, which takes them on an unexpected journey and reveals the true face of America.

Chapter 2: South Carolina. ​​Griffin, South Carolina, is a seeming paradise of progress and racial harmony that hides dark secrets. Meanwhile, bounty hunter Arnold Ridgeway begins his pursuit of Cora.

Chapter 3: North Carolina. Cora reaches a dangerous small town in North Carolina where she must secret herself away in an abolitionist’s attic while putting everyone’s lives in danger.

Chapter 4: The Great Spirit. A young Ridgeway comes of age while testing his belief in The Great Spirit.

Chapter 5: Tennessee – Exodus. Captured by Ridgeway, Cora is forced to travel across the barren inferno of Tennessee. She shares the perilous journey with Jasper, a runaway filled with inner-strength.

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.

Share