W.C. FIELDS New Year’s Gift 2021 – TCM (Turner Classic Movies) screens IT’S A GIFT January 1, 2021 primetime at 8pm.  (W.C. Fields third film on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress).  W.C. Fields Gift of hope for 2021 – follow your Dream! 

I recently screened this film at the Kwetu Film Institute in Kigali, Rwanda.  Kwetu is part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) International Outreach Program, and it is AMPAS who put me in contact with Kwetu and founder Eric Kabera when I first went to Rwanda in 2012.  We have been screening my grandfather’s films there ever since. 

When I screened It’s A Gift the students, all survivors of the genocide of 1994 laughed all the way through.  After I asked them what made them laugh, they said It’s about family, it’s about real life, W.C. Fields never gets mad, he never gets angry, he never hits, he never gives up hope, he never gives up on his dreams. 

I thought to myself this is profound, for the film students are really describing themselves, all survivors of the genocide, they could have chosen other paths, but they saw in W.C. Fields universal gift of understanding the human condition through humor, their own choices of following their dreams in film. 

There is hope in 2021, and the Timelessness of W.C. Fields Art and healing power of Humor will guide us through. see http://www.wcfields.com for more.