Weeksville Watch Night: True North

Weeksville Heritage Center presents Weeksville Watch Night: TRUE NORTH, a free screening in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Directed by Michèle Stephenson, TRUE NORTH unearths two pivotal but underrecognized events, the Congress of Black Writers and the Sir George Williams Affair, positioning the city as a powerful nexus in the global Black liberation movement. Through never-before-seen archival footage and intimate first-person testimonies, the film revisits a charged era of resistance, where Black students and activists challenged institutional racism that sparked reverberations across the globe.

The event concludes with a post-screening discussion with the director.

Location: Weeksville Heritage Center, 158 Buffalo Avenue, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Admission: Free and open to the public

What happens when students and activists in one city challenge institutional racism, and the effects reach across a hemisphere?

TRUE NORTH answers with a film. Directed by Michèle Stephenson, it takes viewers to 1960s Montreal, where the Congress of Black Writers and the Sir George Williams Affair made the city a nexus of the global Black liberation movement. Never-before-seen archival footage and first-person testimonies connect threads from the Caribbean, Canada, and the United States.

The elders who lived it are the heart of the film. Their contributions have largely gone unrecognized, and their stories make TRUE NORTH both an act of remembrance and a call to action for new generations.

Weeksville Watch Night is an ongoing film and conversation series at Weeksville Heritage Center. Each evening brings filmmakers, artists, historians, and community members together to engage Black history, political struggle, cultural memory, and collective care through cinema and dialogue.

Come see a hemispheric view of Black resistance. Leave with a deeper understanding of Montreal’s role in the global Black liberation movement, and a fuller appreciation of the overlooked voices that shaped the fight for racial justice.

This program is supported through public funding from Governor Kathy Hochul; the New York State Senate, including Senator Kevin S. Parker and Senator Zellnor Y. Myrie; Assemblymember Latrice M. Walker; Mayor Zohran K. Mamdani; Speaker of the New York City Council Julie Menin; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, and through generous support from the Altschul Foundation, Brooklyn Org, the Charina Endowment Fund, the Donald A. Pels Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation, the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Scherman Foundation, The Robert M. Schiffman Foundation, and the William C. Bullitt Foundation.