"Sometimes acknowledging the cruelty of 'the Other' is easier than looking at the cruelty in your own community. Raw and uncompromising the Colour Purple revealed the underbelly of post-slavery African-American life. Whoopi Goldberg gave life to a woman brushed, like leaves on the porch into the sands of history.

I connected with this story, it is the same story of Caribbean women I knew, whose stories were buried under the triumphant Windrush mythologies. Celia was too familiar, all too real.”

- Edson Burton, artist and curator at Come The Revolution

Adapted from Alice Walker's Pulitzer celebrated and hard-hitting Prize-winning novel, Steven Spielberg's impressive and dignified film was monumental for black stardom, launching the careers of Whoopi Goldberg and a pre-TV-fame Oprah Winfrey.

The film spans forty years in the life of Celie ( Goldberg), a poor Southern black woman whose friendship with two women helps her to overcome the brutality she has experienced at the hands of her father and her brutal husband, sharecropper Albert (Danny Glover). Although it controversially didn't win any of the eleven Oscars® it was nominated for, The Color Purple has stood the test of time as a powerful tale of friendship and love, and of the capacity for female solidarity to overcome the most impenetrable oppression.

Presented by Come the Revolution in partnership with Ujima Radio as part of

These events are supported by Film Hub South West & West Midlands, part of the Film Audience Network, awarding funds from the National Lottery.

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