LIBERTY AND SLAVERY: THE MAKING OF AMERICA

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LIBERTY AND SLAVERY: THE MAKING OF AMERICA

TUTAK FILMS - as PROD

Comedy - Development 2021

"ALL MEN ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL"
– Thomas Jefferson

- Year of production
- 2021
- Genres
- Comedy, Historical, Action/Adventure
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH
- Duration
- 120 mn
- Synopsis
- The story is an action-packed dark comedy on the original sin of America: slavery. The theater of the grotesque. “A Clockwork Orange” meets “Barry Lyndon.” It’s brutal, sarcastic, and entertaining. Based on actual events. And it will turn all you know about American history and the Founding Fathers on its head.
  
  The choice the colonists faced was not, as some claim, liberty or slavery. It was liberty AND slavery or submission to the British Crown. American liberty would not have been possible without slavery. All but one Founding Fathers owned slaves. And they wanted to keep it that way. Thomas Jefferson kept his children in bondage. Martha Washington, her half-sister. George Washington’s favorite slave Billy Lee may have been his cousin. Benjamin Franklin, obsessed with the idea that King George III wanted to enslave the colonists, named his slaves King and George. Very funny.
  
  Jefferson’s “All men are created equal…” meant “all rich white males only.” Slaves were considered a commodity, not humans. Franklin joked again: “There is some difference between slaves and sheep [commodity]. Sheep will never make any insurrections.” Women and even poor whites were excluded as well.
  
  The main characters of the story are unlikely heroes, two underdogs in an intimate, possibly gay relationship: a foreigner, Polish engineer Thaddeus Kosciuszko, 30, and a Black youth, his body servant, Agrippa Hull, 18. They meet at Fort Ticonderoga in May of ’77 (inciting incident). Both are outsiders and outcasts. Shunned, ostracized, and bullied, subjected to xenophobia and racism. Agrippa is captured to be sold to slavery and nearly killed; Kosciuszko is told to go back to where he came from (PP1). His advice to fortify the hill towering over Fort Ticonderoga is rejected and ridiculed. When the British arrive, they do exactly as Kosciuszko suggested, humiliating Americans, and forcing them to run for their lives (Mid-Point). On the run, Kosciuszko--now more appreciated--fortifies American positions and impedes British pursuit. Hull is always by his side, helping him, assisting him, and protecting him. When the dispirited Americans decide to face the British, Kosciuszko fortifies a terrain near Saratoga (PP2). His fortifications are instrumental in the spectacular American victory at Saratoga (climax). The British defeat at Saratoga spells the beginning of the end of the British rule in the colonies.
  
  Kosciuszko abhors slavery. He believes in the equality of all men. He came to America to fight for it. His love for Agrippa strengthens and personalizes his sympathy for Blacks and their cause. Before leaving America, Kosciuszko turns to his friend Thomas Jefferson. He is making a bequest of all his American assets, asking Jefferson to free and educate slaves, including Jefferson’s own, in hope of triggering widespread emancipation.
  
  Jefferson takes the money, but does he deliver? Does he free his slaves? Does he believe that "All men are—indeed--created equal?”
- Partners & financing
- MANHATTAN FILM ACADEMY