
Jamel Joseph
On Thursday, February 4, from 6:30-8:00 PM, MMPCIA welcomes filmmaker and educator Jamal Joseph as its speaker for Mount Morris Talks! — a series of conversations between the community and leaders, news makers, artists, authors and thinkers who live in the Harlem area.
When Jamal Joseph urges young people to grow, heal, come together or reinvent themselves through the arts and education, he’s speaking from some pretty compelling first-hand experience.
These days Joseph is recognized as chair of Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program, co-founder and executive artistic director of the IMPACT Repertory Theatre of Harlem, executive artistic director of the New Heritage Theatre Group and an Oscar nominee, to name just a few highlights.
He was directing theater back in the ’80s, too — a prison theater, which he established while serving time at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, KS, for harboring a fugitive in a fatal armored car robbery.
It was that time in federal prison, Joseph says, combined with his experiences in the Black Panther Party, that became the fire forging his creative sword and launched him into a lifetime spent helping others learn, share and grow through the arts. While in prison he earned two college degrees, wrote five plays and two volumes of poetry, and founded a theater company that brought together prisoners who’d previously been divided by race, culture and beliefs.
After his release from prison he started teaching, and eventually became a professor at Columbia — the same university where as a 15-year-old he’d been part of the big protests of 1968.
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