A unique film for its time, Anna’s Sin is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello set in Rome of the early 1950s. In particular, Anna’s Sin stages an interracial relationship at the moment of the rise of the U.S. civil rights movement, Pan-Africanism and anti-colonial struggle. Originally debuting in Italy in 1952, Anna’s Sin was released in the U.S. in 1954 and later re-released in 1961 as an interracial exploitation film. For many years, Anna’s Sin was an out-of-circulation, “lost” film, with The Wisconsin Historical Society Archives in Madison, Wisconsin holding a rare English-dubbed version. In 2017, the UCLA Film & Television Archives digitized a 35mm print of the film held by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and are pleased to organize a virtual screening of this rarely seen work.Read More »
