The Enigma of Benito Cereno Pitch
“The Enigma of Benito Cereno”
Alternate Title: “Season of the Sun”
by
Stewart Rein
Cereno‛ is Master and Commander‛ meets The Perfect Storm‛, wrapped around a much more compelling Amistad‛ It is an epic, heart wrenching, powerful, anti-heroic, 18th century period, high-seas adventure about slavery, rebellion, good and evil, sexual lust, justice and morality.
The Enigma of Benito Cereno asks the question, who is the savage and who is the innocent?
One surreal and frightening storm, two ships, fighting for survival, on a fateful collision course: Two ships, old world and new, destined to meet in mist shrouded mystery and bloody confrontation in this action packed ‘walls within walls’ tale of a Spanish Captain once Master and now Slave, a Black once Slave now Master and an American Captain caught up by sheer accident in the epicenter of the drama.
Who is Slave and who is Master?
For the main actors, the script throws down a challenging gauntlet demanding their highest quality performance of its tour de force material.
Cereno, broadened by Stewart Rein into a powerful fresco, is drawn from real events and a true story of the slave rebellion on board The ‘San Dominick’ in the year 1799. The original sources for the present screenplay come from Official Documents, the Journal of Captain Amasa Delano of the ship Tyral, published in 1813 and from the short novel of Herman Melville published in about 1855.
Cereno is a film that will excite the blood of broad based audiences, young and old, black and white, American and Foreign with its mystery, action sequences, exquisite cinematography, its humanity, pathos and gritty attention to period detail. It will be acclaimed as nothing less than a black ‘Schindler’s List’ by the critics.
The bottom line is that Cereno‛ will make a great Oscar Awards film
Lead Characters:
Captain Don Benito Cereno
Slave Leader, Babo
Captain Amasa Delano
