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Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall Books

Film actress

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“But we hav always resisted slavery. Our constant resistance was central to bringing about slavery's end. I came here not only to recover then history of this resistance, but also to specifically find the women whose stories had been written out of slave revolts. After reading every scrap of every story about slave revolts, I came across ones that included women, but only if I read between the lines.”

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Book:Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
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“Is there any space left in these documents for the testimony of Sarah, Abigail, Lily, or Amba? No, only this: "Having said no more than she had previously said for herself." No one bothered to record what they had said before. This is one way history erases us. What we had to say was not even considered important enough to record.”

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Book:Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
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“Living in the wake of slavery is haunting, and to experience this haunting is to be nothing less than traumatized. Still, it is possible to heal from trauma, or come to terms with it. At first, we try to block out the horrors of the past - to ignore them, to pretend they are not there. The next step is to acknowledge the past and its harm, even as it triggers us. We try to avoid looking at it too closely. But the ghosts are everywhere; they have been waiting for us all along.”

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Author:Rebecca Hall
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“We reach the final stage of healing from trauma when we integrate the past into who we are. It becomes a part of us that we acknowledge and provides understanding of our world. The past is not a ghost we want to banish or exorcise; it is something we want to internalize. Like at a wake, a wake as in a funeral, we speak of the dead for the dead. At this wake, we must defend the dead. Our memories must be longer than our lifetimes.”

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“If you choose to do both [acting and directing] on a set, than you're admitting that you understand that everyone is in it for the same goal and it's a collaborative experience. You can't really jump into being an actor, and than direct yourself. At some point, you have to be willing to accept other people's opinions. I think that's helpful. If you try to micro-manage and control all of it, than you're probably heading for disaster.”

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Author:Rebecca Hall
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“You either hear the story and you're curious, and you're sort of sympathetic, or you think, "Ugh, how horrible." That's dehumanizing. How about we take that and turn Christine Chubbuck into a person and it's not about the final act, it's about her life. I felt that really strongly, and I felt a sort of deep sympathy with her. It's also why I do what I do. I want to try to make difficult people somehow relatable.”

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Author:Rebecca Hall
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“Feminism is something I think about more when I watch the film, Christine, rather than when I was actually doing it, to be honest with you. But I do think it functions as a sort of interesting feministic critique, because you are seeing a woman who's resolutely incapable of behaving like the kind of woman that's acceptable at the time. She doesn't know how to play the game by everyone else's rules, and it makes you realize that actually there were rules that were functioning for a woman to be a careerist.”

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“As I'm sure anyone who's born after the '70s' access point is - is '70s films and '70s culture and there is a kind of a paranoiac atmosphere in that time in America. Yes, it's the golden age of journalism, Watergate, and all the rest of these people making these great breakthroughs - but it's also the moment that "if it bleeds, it leads" becomes mainstream and sensationalizing the news becomes more and more the given. Checking how many numbers you're getting, whatever you can do to get more numbers.”

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Author:Rebecca Hall
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“We cannot talk with [animals] as we can with human beings, yet we can communicate with them on mental and emotional levels. They should, however, be accorded equality in that they should receive both compassion and respect; it is unworthy of us to exploit them in any way.”

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Book:Animals Are Equal: An Exploration of Animal Consciousness
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