The Inspiring Story Of Daniel And Mary Bell Brought To Cinema
On June 2, 2022 a special showing of the film The Bell Affair, which tells the inspiring story of Daniel and Mary Bell who sued for their freedom from slavery and won. After slaveholders threaten to re-enslave them and their children, the Bells led one of the largest escape attempts in American history.
The Bell Affair premiered in Prince George's County, Maryland on June 2, 2022. At the premiere, several branches of the descendants of Daniel and Mary bell came together, some meeting for the first time. Screened at film festivals, family reunions, churches and local community centers. The film has gained enthusiastic audiences and will be distributed for wide theatrical and streaming release by Random Media.
In the summer of 1835, a strike at the Washington Navy Yard fueled a citywide race riot. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Francis Scott Key, set out to prosecute abolitionist Reuben Crandall for libelous sedition and the intent to incite a slave revolt. Freedom in the balance.
In the midst of this political turmoil, Daniel Bell convinced Mary's dying slaveholder, Robert Armstead to emancipate Mary and the children. Two days later, Armstead died and his widow Susan Armstead refused to honor the Bell's freedom.
She arranged to have Daniel secretly sold. Slave traders infiltrated the Nvy Yard, captured and unsuspecting Bell on the shop floor and dragged him in chains to the slave pen at the infamous Yellow House.
Daniel fought a desperate and expensive battle in court to win his own freedom and protect his family from Susan Armstead. When Mary and the children's freedom suits failed in the courts, the Bells attempted to escape enslavement, setting off for freedom on a schooner called the Pearl.
The film was created with major support from the National Endowment for Humaniites, Maryland Humaniites, The Kitty m. Perkins Foundation and the Office of Research and economic Development at The University of NebraskaLincoln.
This dramatic feature comes from first-time director, playwright and African American film scholar Kwakiutl Dreher, digital artist and award-winning animator Michael Burton, and prize-winning historian and Guggenheim Fellow William G. Thomas III. Filmed and directed remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, The Bell Affair cast was never in the same room with each other or with the director at the same time. The film was produced in partnership with Western Meadowlark LLC.
Enslaved people remain largely faceless and nameless in history textbooks. Many Americans understand slavery as an abstract, anonymous institution, not as a lived experience by real people whose descendants are here today.
The Bell Affair seeks to put an enslaved family at the center of their own freedom making, telling the story of a particular family and connecting them to the larger historical narrative American history.
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