The Oscars were last night. The Oscars are movie awards. The Oscar for Best Picture (Best Movie) went to 12 Years a Slave. Watch the movie trailer above, then read about the movie below.

From Wikipedia.org:

12 Years a Slave is a 2013 historical drama film and an adaptation of the 1853 memoir of the same name by Solomon Northup, a New York State-born free African American man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841 and sold into slavery. He worked on plantations in the state of Louisiana for twelve years before his release.

Solomon Northup (July 1808 – 1863?)was a free-born African American from New York, the son of a freed slave. A farmer and violinist, he owned a property in Hebron. In 1841 he was kidnapped by slave-traders, having been enticed with a job offer as a violinist. When he accompanied his supposed employers to Washington, DC, they drugged him and sold him as a slave. He was shipped to New Orleans where he was sold to a plantation owner in Louisiana. He was held in the Red River region of Louisiana by several different owners for 12 years, during which time his friends and family had no knowledge of him. He made repeated attempts to escape and get messages out of the plantation. Eventually he got news to his family, who contacted friends and enlisted the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, to his cause. He regained his freedom in January 1853 and returned to his family in New York. In his first year of freedom Northup published an account of his experiences in the memoir Twelve Years a Slave (1853).