1) Matthew H. Bernstein discusses Screening a Lynching at Decatur Library.
2) Beauty from the Beast continues at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center Gallery.
3) The Balkans and Abby Go Go play 529.
4) Brian Ray discusses Through the Pale Door at Opal Gallery.
5) The Hurt Locker continues in area theaters.
(Photo by Don Chambers)
For years the Leo Frank murder case and lynching had been seen through its more obvious prisms of racism, anti-Semitism, class, socioeconomics and crime. For decades historians have sifted through Frank’s conviction for the 1913 rape and killing of Mary Phagan, the 13-year-old girl who worked at the Atlanta Pencil Factory that Frank managed.
The story’s legend was cemented with his death-sentence commutation courtesy Georgia’s outgoing governor and Frank’s subsequent lynching in Marietta after being kidnapped from a Milledgeville prison. It became the source of countless writings. But even just a few years after the publication of what many believe is the definitive examination of the case, the story remains compelling with issues yet unexamined. Emory film professor Matthew Bernstein deftly proves this with his exploration of the case through the media lens, so to speak, with Screening to a Lynching: The Leo Frank Case on Film and Television (University of Georgia Press). (more…)
