Discussion Questions: La Amistad (answer in your journals)
1. What was the theme of this film? What were the film makers trying to tell us?
Were they successful? Justify your answer.
2. What did you learn from the movie?
3. Was there something you didn't understand about the movie?
4. Select an action performed by one of the characters in the film and explain why
the character took that action. What motivated him or her? What did this
motivation have to do with the theme of the film?
5. Who was John Quincy Adams? What was his role? Why was his role so
important to the outcome?
6. What was the legal basis cited by the Court to justify freeing the La Amistad
Africans?
7. Who is the hero in Amistad? Why?
8. Based on your understanding of the slave trade, how important was the outcome
of the final trial?
9. In spite of the "facts" of history versus Amistad the film, to what extent did your
thinking change about the legacy of slavery?
10. How do you understand America's response to the Holocaust of African slaves?
To the Holocaust of Jews in Europe? Is there is a difference? Why?