12 Years a Slave

CTL-E-5472 · Work · film · 2013

PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record

12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen from John Ridley's screenplay adapting Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir, and distributed in the United States by Fox Searchlight Pictures, tells the true account of a free Black man of New York kidnapped in 1841 and sold into Louisiana slavery for twelve years. At the 86th Academy Awards it won Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Ridley, and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong'o; it also won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture — Drama and the BAFTA for Best Film. Trade reporting put its worldwide gross at about $140 million on a reported $20 million budget. The Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry in 2023, a decade after release — the institution's confirmation of what the awards season had asserted. For this graph, whose timeline begins with the arrival of the enslaved in 1619, McQueen's film is the slavery era's defining screen treatment: unflinching where the textbook tradition was evasive, and sourced — a memoir, a named man, a recoverable record — in a way the citation standard can stand behind.

Notes

Statistics: Fox Searchlight (US), 2013; Academy Award for Best Picture; National Film Registry 2023 (Library of Congress). Director Steve McQueen holds no graph Person record — flagged as a future candidate. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review: Northup's memoir waited 160 years for its film; the film took a decade to reach the Registry. The record files both waits — the citation graph's subject, again and again, is the distance between an event and its institutional acknowledgment. · Photo slot: HELD — poster/key art and production stills for this title are copyrighted studio material and were NOT pulled (per CTL-PHOTO-001 and the wave brief: never force non-free key art); no cleared Commons image was verified for this title in this run. Slot honestly HELD pending a cleared visual.

Sources

• Los Angeles Sentinel, '12 Years A Slave Wins Best Picture At Oscars' — supports: the Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay (Ridley), and Supporting Actress (Nyong'o) wins — https://lasentinel.net/12-years-a-slave-wins-best-picture-at-oscars.html
• The Motley Fool, '12 Years a Slave Wins Best Picture Oscar: 3 Lessons for Hollywood' (March 2014) — supports: the Golden Globe and BAFTA wins and the reported gross/budget figures (trade-reported, carried as reported) — https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/03/12-years-a-slave-wins-best-picture-oscar-3-lessons.aspx
• Library of Congress, National Film Registry complete listing — supports: the film's selection for the National Film Registry in 2023 — https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing (primary source)

Record CTL-E-5472 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: PROVISIONAL · 3 sources (1 primary) · CTL research: MEDIA-001.
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