morgan freeman coming to town for special...

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Morgan Freeman coming to town for special screening

Morgan Freeman is coming to Oakville.The Academy Award-winning actor will

be in town on Nov. 11 for a sold-out screen-ing of the feature documentary, Prom Nightin Mississippi. Directed by Oakville residentand Emmy-winning producer-director, PaulSaltzman, the film follows a group of stu-dents in Charleston, Mississippi, that upuntil 2008, were subject to racially-segre-gated proms.

The black community had a prom andthe white community had a prom. No racialmixing.

The emotionally poignant and sociallyilluminating film sheds a glaring light onovert prejudice in modern society. But it’sFreeman’s offer to pay for the high school

prom under one criterion — the prom isintegrated. Originally tabling the offer in1997, which was ignored, Freeman offersto pick up the tab again in 2008 — whenhistory was made.

“He’s very supportive of the arena ofending prejudice,” said Saltzman ofFreeman. “As he says in the film, ‘These arechains around our souls.’”

For the first showing of the documen-tary in the town he calls home, Oakville —where he lives with his wife, PatriciaAquino, the film’s co-producer —Saltzman noted that this is the first screen-ing that Freeman will be joining for a Q&A.

“We are delighted he’s coming up.”Bringing Freeman to Oakville was a joint

effort, adds Chris Invidiata, a close friend ofSaltzman and an Oakville businessman.

“We wanted to make it a special occasion

for Mr. Freeman, to create a really nice wel-come, so five families got together and raiseda lot of money to bring him up,” saidInvidiata.

The five Oakville families are Lesley andChristopher Invidiata, Kelly and PaulGardiner, Tracy and Hugo Powell, Zev andKamal Sharma, and Katherine and PierreMorrissette.

All $100 tickets for the Oakville screeninghave been sold; however, Freeman will be atthe Nov. 13 Toronto screening at VarsityCinema, where there are still remaining tick-ets.

“[The five Oakville families] all feel pas-

sionate about helping and sharing the visionof the proceeds going back to inner-cityschools in the United States and in Canada,”added Invidiata, referencing the MovingBeyond Prejudice initiative.

Not only seeing the film as telling of uni-versal prejudice, but also as an education tool,Saltzman’s Moving Beyond Prejudice is a sup-plementary educational DVD package, whichhe is working on putting in schools that can-not afford them.

“There is a desire for people to talk aboutthese things. The question is almost, ‘How doyou get the discussion started?’”

■ By Ryan BoltonSPECIAL TO THE BEAVER

Director Paul Saltzman and Morgan Freeman

■ See Director page 33

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