12 Years a Slave (film)

12 Years a Slave is a 2013 period drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 slave narrative memoir Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, a New York Stateborn free AfricanAmerican man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. Northup worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana foryears before his release. The first scholarly edition of Northups memoir, coedited in 1968 by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, carefully retraced and validated the account and concluded it to be accurate. Other characters in the film were also real people, including Edwin and Mary Epps, and Patsey.

In 1841, Solomon Northup is a free AfricanAmerican man working as a violinist, who lives with his wife, and two children, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Two men, Brown and Hamilton, offer him shortterm employment as a musician if he will travel with them to Washington, D.C. However, once they arrive, the duo drug Northup and conspire to deliver him to a slave pen. Northup is later shipped to New Orleans along with others who have been detained against their will. A slave trader named Freeman gives Northup the identity of Platt, a runaway slave from Georgia, and sells him to plantation owner William Ford. Due to tension between Northup and another plantation worker, Ford sells him to another slave owner named Edwin Epps. In the process, Northup attempts to explain that he is actually a free man, but to no avail.In contrast to the relatively benevolent Ford, Epps is a sadist who abuses and beats his slaves. Some time later, an outbreak of cotton worm befalls his plantation. Unable to work his fields, he leases his slaves to a neighboring plantation for the season. While there, Northup gains the favor of the plantations owner, Judge Turner, who allows him to play the fiddle at a neighbors wedding anniversary celebration, and to keep his earnings. When Northup returns to Epps, he attempts to use the money to pay a white field hand and former overseer, Armsby, to mail a letter to his friends in New York state. Armsby agrees to deliver the letter, and accepts Northups saved money in return, but later betrays him to Epps. Northup is narrowly able to convince Epps that Armsby is lying and avoids punishment. ........

Source: Wikipedia