Recipient of the 2021 Honorary Mention for the Haiti Book Prize from
the Haitian Studies Association
In Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video
Games author Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall analyzes how films and video
games from around the world have depicted slave revolt, focusing on the
Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). This event, the first successful
revolution by enslaved people in modern history, sent shock waves
throughout the Atlantic World. Regardless of its historical significance
however, this revolution has become less well-known--and appears less
often on screen--than most other revolutions; its story, involving
enslaved Africans liberating themselves through violence, does not match
the suffering-slaves-waiting-for-a-white-hero genre that pervades
Hollywood treatments of Black history.
Despite Hollywood's near-silence on this event, some films on the
Revolution do exist--from directors in Haiti, the US, France, and
elsewhere. Slave Revolt on Screen offers the first-ever comprehensive
analysis of Haitian Revolution cinema, including completed films and
planned projects that were never made.
In addition to studying cinema, this book also breaks ground in
examining video games, a pop-culture form long neglected by historians.
Sepinwall scrutinizes video game depictions of Haitian slave revolt that
appear in games like the Assassin's Creed series that have reached
millions more players than comparable films. In analyzing films and
games on the revolution, Slave Revolt on Screen calls attention to the
ways that economic legacies of slavery and colonialism warp pop-culture
portrayals of the past and leave audiences with distorted
understandings.
