The Killing Floor, New Digital Restoration, Sat ,7/27/2019, 7pm, Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St.

DCP, color, 118 min.
Director: Bill Duke.
Production: Public Forum Productions, Ltd.
Producers: Elsa Rassbach, George Manasse.
Screenwriters: Leslie Lee, Elsa Rassbach, Ron Milner.
Cinematographer: William Birch.
Production Designer: Maher Ahmad.
Editor: John N. Carter.
Music: Elizabeth Swados.
Cast: Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Farina, Ernest Rayford, Moses Gunn, Clarence Felder.

Rich in characters and played against a canvas red with the blood of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, this critically acclaimed independent film tells a true story of how a group of black and white slaughterhouse workers attempted to break race barriers to build an interracial union for the first time in the brutal Chicago Stockyards. Damien Leake stars as Frank Custer, a young black sharecropper from Mississippi—one of tens of thousands of southern blacks who journeyed to the industrial north during World War One, hoping for more racial equality.

When Frank lands a job as a laborer on “the killing floor” of a giant Chicago meatpacking plant, he finds a place seething with racial antagonism. White immigrant workers are determined to improve their bargaining power by bringing the new black migrants into the union for the first time, but many blacks resist, having had bitter experience with whites. When Frank decides to support the union, his best friends from the South turn against him.

The screenplay by Obie Award-winning playwright Leslie Lee is based on a story developed and written by producer Elsa Rassbach, working together with a team of leading historians. Her independent production company invited Bill Duke to direct the screenplay as his feature film debut. The characters and events are authentic and were discovered through research in historical archives.

Production of this ambitious historical drama on labor and black history during the Reagan Era was made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Illinois Humanities, American Playhouse, several foundations, more than forty unions and two corporations. The political breakthrough that allowed such broad union support has never again been achieved in US film or television. The film was shot on location in Chicago with a local union film crew and a cast featuring the city’s fine acting talent in 1983 shortly after Chicagoans elected their first African-American mayor.

In 1985 The Killing Floor was invited to numerous festivals (including Cannes) and garnered many prestigious awards (such as the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award) along with rave reviews:

“Rich and revealing, a cry of historical dimensions…”– Variety

“A classic study in class hate, greed and stubborn idealism. You won’t soon forget it!”
— Newsday

“I’ve seen no more clear-eyed account of union organizing on film…”
— The Village Voice –

“Mr. Leake (as Frank Custer) provides a strong and intensely charged dramatic core.”
–The New York Times

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DCP, color, 118 min. Production: Public Forum Productions, Ltd.
Producers: Elsa Rassbach, George Manasse. Director: Bill Duke. Screenwriters: Leslie Lee,
Elsa Rassbach, Ron Milner. Cinematographer: William Birch. Production Designer: Maher Ahmad. Editor: John N. Carter. Music: Elizabeth Swados. Cast: Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Farina, Ernest Rayford, Moses Gunn, Clarence Felder.

Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 from a 16mm safety color original picture negative and a mono 16mm safety audio mag track MTI Nova Restoration, laboratory services and DCP by UCLA Film & Television Archive Digital Media Lab. Special thanks to Elsa Rassbach, Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA Film & Television Archive. Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA Film & Television Archive. Final color grading by Oliver Tost of ALPHA-OMEGA digital GmbH (Munich), supervised by Elsa Rassbach.

Official Site | New York Times | Variety | FAIR | Village Voice | London Evening Standard

For media inquiries: contact Michael W. Phillips Jr. of South Side Projections (info@southsideprojections.org) or producer/writer Elsa Rassbach (elsarassbach@gmail.com).