Ghosts of Amistad premiered at the Three Rivers Film Festival in Pittsburgh on November 15, 2014, eighteen months after filming in Sierra Leone. Since its first screening it has aired numerous times across the United States on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS-TV), especially during Black History Month. The American Historical Association awarded the film the John E. O’Conner Prize as the best historical documentary of 2015.
The film has also been screened in all kinds of venues – in ten film festivals and in dozens of universities, community colleges, high schools, museums, libraries, prisons, and community settings – and around the world, in the Dominican Republic, England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Scotland.
Selected screenings
Film festivals:
- Three Rivers Film Festival, Pittsburgh, PA (premiere)
- Africa in Motion Film Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland
- Association Protéa Film Festival, Paris, France
- Athens International Film Festival, Athens, OH (winner third prize, feature documentary)
- Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival, Pittsburgh, PA
- New York African Film Festival, New York, NY:
- Pan African Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA
- San Diego Black Film Festival, San Diego, CA
- Seine-Saint-Denis Documentary Film Festival, Paris, France
- Sembene Film Festival, Pittsburgh, PA
Universities:
- Birkbeck College, University of London
- Brown University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Concordia University
- DePaul University
- Duquesne University
- Elizabeth City State University
- Free University Amsterdam
- Georgetown University
- Goucher College
- Harvard University
- Indiana University Pennsylvania
- Johnson County Community College
- Metropolitan Community College
- Norfolk State University
- Northwestern University
- Oberlin College
- Pennsylvania State University
- Pennsylvania State University-Greater Allegheny
- Princeton University
- Purdue University
- St. John’s University
- School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
- Trinity College (Hartford)
- Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo
- University of Bologna
- University of California-Santa Cruz:
- University of Chicago
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Pittsburgh
- Wesley College
Museums and Libraries
- Connecticut’s Old State House, Hartford, CT
- Custom House Maritime Museum, New London, CT
- East Side Freedom Library, St. Paul, MN
- Honolulu Art Museum, Honolulu, HI
- King Manor Museum, Jamaica, NY
- Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France:
- Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT
- New Haven Museum, New Haven, CT
- Pump House, Battle of Homestead Foundation, Pittsburgh, PA:
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY:
Selected other screenings
- Alliance Culture et Education of France/Sierra Leone, Paris, France
- Annual Meeting of the Association of African American History and Life, Richmond, VA
- Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New York, NY
- Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians. St. Louis, MO
- Annual Meeting of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, New Haven, CT
- City of Asylum, Pittsburgh, PA
- Collège d’études mondiales/Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris, France
- Fondation des États-Unis, Paris, France
- International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Le Lieu Dit, Paris, France:
- Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
- Humanities Festival, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust:
- Rendez-vous de l’Histoire, Blois, France
- Three Rivers Arts Festival, Pittsburgh, PA
- Wallkill (NY) Correctional Facility, New York University Prison Education Program