Paul Bennet: Last News

Krystin Ver Linden’s debut movie Alice arrives with the assurance that it is based on true events, one of those vague guarantees that lingers in the back of your mind while the movie unspools and what you think you’re watching turns out to be something very, very different. Factuality is often a moot point in cinema—with his legendarily terrible 1957 space vampire flick Plan 9 from Outer Space, Ed Wood even tried reverse-psychology, asking viewers, “Can you prove that it didn’t happen?” But with a slick slave drama-slash-revenge thriller it immediately raises questions of taste and decency: is this really the proper vehicle for a meditation on Civil Rights? Surprisingly, Ver Linden’s film walks that tightrope very well. There are wobbles for sure, but the commitment from her cast keep its intentions pure even when the storytelling falters, which is often.

Up until the 1960s, Black folks, tricked by sinister white folks, were entrapped into servitude because of debts that they owed. Southern whites took advantage of the climate of racism that dominated the area, and the inherent power dynamics such a system provided, to maintain a form of slavery over a century after its formal abolishment.

Amanda N'Duka pmc-editorial-managerEXCLUSIVE: Sinqua Walls, who currently toplines the BET series American Soul, has been added to the cast of the Krystin Ver Linden-helmed indie thriller, Alice, joining Keke Palmer, who stars in the title role, Common and Jonny Lee Miller.The pic, which is being financed by Steel Springs Pictures, is inspired by the true events of a woman of servitude in 1800s Georgia, who escapes the 55 acre confines of her captor to discover the shocking reality that exists beyond the tree line… it’s 1973. Walls will play Joseph a slave and Alice’s husband who live on Master Paul Bennet’s (Miller) plantation as they plot their escape to freedom after jumping the broom.