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  • Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
  • Department of History
Accolades & Honors

‘Ghosts of Amistad’ Documentary Now Accessible Online

The award-winning documentary “Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels,” directed by Tony Buba and produced by Pitt Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History Marcus Rediker, is now available to view online for free on Pitt’s YouTube and Vimeo channels. Rediker teaches in the Department of History, part of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences.

The film chronicles a journey to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the rebels who captured the slave schooner Amistad in 1839. The filmmakers interviewed elders about local memory of the incident through the oral tradition and searched for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where the cruel transatlantic voyage began. Rediker and Buba relied on the knowledge of villagers, fishermen and truck drivers to recover a lost history from below in the struggle against slavery and to restore the popular memory of the Atlantic slave trade.

“In a time when many Americans and others around the world are eager to learn about racial injustice and its history, it is crucial to have this film about the slave trade—and successful resistance to the slave trade—as a resource,” said Rediker, adding that his primary goal in making the film was “to create the best possible educational tool for the widest possible audience.”

“Ghosts of Amistad” is also available, with subtitles, in French, Italian and Spanish. The film was awarded the John E. O’Connor Film Prize by the American Historical Association as the best historical documentary of 2015.  It has been screened around the world—in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Bologna and throughout the United States.