Black Hollywood: Nickel Boys
Set in Tallahassee in 1962, Nickel Boys chronicles the lives of two teenagers, Ellwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), as they navigate life at Nickel Academy, a racially segregated labor camp posing as a reform school for children. Ellwood, inspired by televised speeches delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, dreams of exposing the system that exploits and abuses Black children, while Turner insists on looking out only for himself.
Shot and told entirely in a first-person point-of-view, the film offers a powerful invitation to reflect on the firsthand experience of institutionalized cruelty, positioning the viewer as both witness and victim. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, Nickel Boys takes its subject from the real-world Dozier Reform School for Boys, which closed in 2011.
Filmmaker RaMell Ross will join moderator Mireille Miller-Young (Feminist Studies, UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Nickel Boys.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat. Tickets for this event will be available for reservation on Friday, November 15 at 11:00 AM.
RaMell Ross is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian. He has been awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Howard Foundation Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, and was a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University.
Mireille Miller-Young is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies at UCSB. The former UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow researches and teaches about race, gender, and sexuality in US history, popular and film cultures, and the sex industries.