Director Raoul Peck Discusses ‘Exterminate All The Brutes’ At Sag Harbor Cinema

On Monday, November 8, Sag Harbor Cinema will host a special screening of the first two episodes of the four-part HBO documentary series, “Exterminate All the Brutes.”

The acclaimed Haitian director, Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”), will be present for a Q&A with Dr. Jennifer L. Morgan, a professor of history at New York University. The event will start at 6 p.m. and episodes are 55 minutes each.

Through his personal voyage, Peck deconstructs the making and masking of history, digging deep into the exploitative and genocidal aspects of European colonialism — from America to Africa and its impact on society today — challenging the audience to re-think the very notion of how history is being written. The series is based on three works by authors and scholars — Sven Lindqvist’s “Exterminate All the Brutes,” Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States” and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s “Silencing the Past.” “Exterminate All the Brutes” revisits and reframes the profound meaning of the Native American genocide and American slavery, and their fundamental implications for our present.

“As writers, creators, filmmakers we have no choice but to try and reflect our societies and give some sort of analysis of them the best way we can,” says Raoul Peck. “And as artists, we need to break the limits of our art.”

The series artfully weaves together rich documentary footage and archival material, as well as dynamic animation and interpretive scripted scenes and aims to tell a sweeping story in which history, contemporary life and fiction are wholly intertwined. Peck meticulously disrupts formal and artistic film conventions, freely weaving together scripted and unscripted content.

“Having Raoul Peck in conversation at the Cinema is literally a dream come true. I am thrilled this is finally happening and that his presence will give us an opportunity to share with our audience his latest work, which is also one of his most thought provoking. I am very grateful to our board member, Susan Lacy, for facilitating this evening, and to HBO for allowing the screening,” says Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the founding artistic director of Sag Harbor Cinema.

Raoul Peck is an Oscar nominated director, screenwriter and producer. Born in Haiti, raised in the Congo, United States, France, and Germany, Peck is one of the most significant filmmakers of our time, richly rewarded for his historical, political and artistic work. His complex body of work includes such films as “The Man by the Shore,” “Lumumba,” “Sometimes,” “Moloch Tropical,” “The Young Karl Marx” and “I Am Not Your Negro,” which won an Emmy, a Bafta, and a César.

Dr. Jennifer L Morgan is a part-time Sag Harbor resident and the author of the book “Reckoning With Slavery, Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic.”

Sag Harbor Cinema is at 90 Main Street, Sag Harbor. For tickets, visit sagharborcinema.org.