12 Years a Slave · written by John Ridley and Steve McQueen · 2013

An overseer demonstrates how to trim cane stalks for cultivation to Solomon and the newly arrived workers.

Scene 155 of 211 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Overseer

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:40 into a 2:22 film

The story so farBefore scene 155

After being kidnapped from New York and sold into slavery, Solomon Northup uses his skills and carefully placed trust to survive and seek a way back to his family.

Scenes 1–29
Solomon lives freely in Saratoga as a husband, father, worker, and musician.
Scenes 30–65
Kidnapped and held under the imposed name Platt, Solomon must preserve his life and identity.
Scenes 66–123
He enters plantation life under Ford, passes through Tibeats’s violence and the near-lynching, and is transferred to Epps.
Scene 124
Solomon is transferred to Epps’s plantation and placed among Patsey and the enslaved workers, opening the harsher final plantation phase.
Just before
Scene 152
Epps’s cart passes a runaway slave being torn by dogs while white and Native American patrolmen watch; Solomon carries his fiddle with him.
Scene 153
Epps leases his workers to Judge Turner as another enslaved woman is separated from a male relative; Solomon sees Anna comfort her before Epps warns his slaves not to disgrace him.
Scene 154
Solomon and the other captives spend the night packed into an airless shack, coughing and struggling for space.
Scene 155
This scene

155EXT. CANE FIELDS - DAY

An OVERSEER is explaining to the new slaves - SOLOMON AMONG THEM - how to cultivate cane. WITH A KNIFE IN HAND he demonstrates the process:

OVERSEER

Draw the cane from the rick, cut

the top and flags from the stalk,

understand? Leave only that part

which is sound and healthy. Cast

off the rest...