It all started for Anita Allison at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts, so it's only fitting that her 14-minute short film is set to premiere there.
Cuffe: Taxed, debuting August 13th, is all about Paul Cuffe, who, after being born free in 1759, became the first Black captain of a fleet of whaling ships and also fought against taxation without representation during the Revolutionary War. Born on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, Cuffe was the son of a Wampanoag (Native American) mother and a Black, freed-slave father.
Cuffe was one of the richest men of color in the early United States, putting money back into the community, opening schools and sitting at one point with President James Madison, becoming the first Black man to sit with an active president. Allison first learned about Cuffe when she visited the New Bedford Whaling Museum in 2022. Though Cuffe himself was not mulatto, his mixed-race story resonated for Allison.
"The tragic mulatto: not Black, not White, adored, hated, rootless and doomed," Allison explained in her Artist's Statement. "That’s how I saw myself reflected in history when I was in middle school. I wasn’t tragic. What was tragic was the lack of people like me in history books. Cuffe: Taxed is all about transforming the “tragic mulatto” into a never-seen-before American hero."
Set in 1779 and played as a comedy adventure, the film stars Tyson Brown as Cuffe and Salustiano Berrios as his brother-in-law Michael Wainer. The pair work together to sneak food past British patrols to starving residents in Nantucket and also deliver a grandfather clock to their well-heeled patron.
The August 13th premiere is quite the event. It will begin with "Paul Cuffe Is Me," a music video performed by Boston-based rapper Daniel Laurent, with music by Roy Studmire and dancers from Brickhouse NYC.
Following the screening, a Q&A will be moderated by Lee Blake of the New Bedford Historical Society with participation from Allison, Brown and Berrios alongside Akeia de Barros Gomes, PhD, director of the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History at the Newport Historical Society. There will then be a second private screening and fundraising gala, "Cocktails with Cuffe," in the museum's Harbor View Gallery.
“I was really surprised to hear about his story, this guy who was born free and thriving and politically influential and wealthy,” Allison, who now calls Marion, Massachusetts home, told Sippican Week. “It kind of pissed me off a little bit. It certainly lit a fire, and I was like, ‘Why hasn't this story of thriving been told before?’”
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Helping Allison bring the film to life is Emmy-nominated cinematographer Ayana Baraka, herself one of the few Black women in IATSE Local 600. The USC grad is also the creator of Greenwood Avenue, a VR experience about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
Following the New Bedford premiere, another similar event with Q&A will be presented August 21st at the Egan Maritime Institute in Nantucket.
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