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Category Archives: Blacks

These Hands (1992)

13 Jun

DVD
45 minutes, 1992, Tanzania, Africa
Director: Flora M’mbugu-Schelling
in Kimakonde and Swahili with English subtitles
http://newsreel.org/video/THESE-HANDS

Who would have suspected that a 45 minute documentary about women crushing rocks, without narration or plot, would offer one of the most unforgettable and rewarding experiences of recent African cinema? Flora M’mbugu-Schelling’s quiet tribute to women at the very bottom of the international economic order ultimately deepens into a mediation on human labor itself. These Hands will stimulate viewers to rethink documentary and to question their own role as consumers in a global economy.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Construction Trades, Documentary, Global Economy, Women

 

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To Sleep with Anger (1990)

13 Jun

101m; U.S.

Director: Charles Burnett

Cast: Danny Glover, Paul Butler and DeVaughn Nixon

Synopsis (Wikipedia): Harry Mention (Danny Glover), an enigmatic drifter from the South, comes to visit an old acquaintance named Gideon (Paul Butler), who now lives in South-Central Los Angeles. Harry’s charming, down-home manner hides a malicious penchant for stirring up trouble, and he exerts a strange and powerful effect on Gideon and his thoroughly assimilated black, middle-class family, including wife Suzie (Mary Alice) and sons Junior (Carl Lumbly) and Babe Brother (Richard Brooks).

After Gideon suffers a stroke, Harry’s influence over the family grows, in particular over Babe Brother, the youngest son. Harry introduces him to a lifestyle of drinking and gambling, and encourages him to leave his wife to join Harry and his friends on the road. However, before Babe Brother gets a chance to leave, Junior confronts him. They fight, and their mother gets stabbed in the hand trying to separate them. After taking her to the hospital, Babe Brother decides to stay with his family instead of joining Harry. When Harry comes back to collect some things, he slips on some marbles belonging to Babe Brother’s son, and dies. Soon after, Gideon gets out of his bed for the first time in months, causing the viewer to question the relationship between Harry’s presence in the house and Gideon’s sickness.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, White Collar, Working Class

 

Trouble the Water (2008)

13 Jun

90m; U.S.

Director: Carl Deal, Tia Lessin

Synopsis: A redemptive tale of an aspiring rap artist surviving failed levees and her own troubled past and seizing a chance for a new beginning in post-Katrina New Orleans.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary

 

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1987)

13 Jun

110m; U.S.

Director: Stan Lathan

Cast: Avery Brooks, Kate Burton, Bruce Dern, Samuel L. Jackson

Synopsis: Film version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Slavery

 

What Does Trouble Mean? Nate Smith’s Revolution (2009)

13 Jun

56m; U.S.

Director: Jim Seguin

Synopsis: Bio-pic doc of Nate Smith who led protests against black exclusion from white unions.

Contact: http://www.natesmithmovie.ocm

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Organizing

 

Which Way Is Up? (1977)

13 Jun

94m; U.S.

Director: Michael Schultz

Cast: Richard Pryor, Lonette McKee and Margaret Avery

Synopsis (IMDB): Richard Pryor is playing three different roles here. The first being a poor orange picker named Leroy Jones who gets laid off when by mistake he joins the worker’s union during one of their demonstrations. Afterwards he is forced to leave his wife and family behind which also includes Leroy’s father (also played by Pryor) to go to Los Angeles. Leroy ends up working for the same company that fired him back home. He is a manager at the company but he is now distant from his former pals. He meets and falls in love with Vanetta who is a labor organizer which leaves him splitting time between his wife Annie Mae and Vanetta. When Leroy finds out that the Reverend Lenox Thomas (also played by Pryor) has got his wife pregnant while he was absent, he then make the moves on the reverend’s wife.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Working Class

 

Wild River (1960)

13 Jun

110m; U.S.

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet

Synopsis (IMDB): A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man’s love affair with that woman’s widowed granddaughter.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Organizing, Public Sector

 

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Xica da Silva (1976)

13 Jun

Release Date: 1996   Duration: 107 min
Cast: José Wilker

Xica da Silva (released as Xica in the United States) is a 1976 Brazilian film directed and written by Carlos Diegues, based on the novel by João Felício dos Santos pt:João Felício dos Santos. It stars Zezé Motta, Walmor Chagas and José Wilker. It was chosen as the Brazilian submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 49th Academy Awards, but it failed to get a nomination. The film is based on the novel Memórias do Distrito de Diamantina, written by João Felicio dos Santos (who has a small role in the film as a Roman Catholic pastor). It is a romanticized retelling of the true story of Chica da Silva, an 18th century African slave in the state of Minas Gerais, who attracts the attention of João Fernandes de Oliveira, a Portuguese sent by Lisbon with the Crown’s exclusive contract for mining diamonds, and eventually becomes his lover. He quickly asserts control, letting the intendant and other authorities know that he’s onto their corruption scheme. Eventually Lisbon hears of João’s excesses and sends an inspector. José, a political radical, provides Xica refuge.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Biography, Blacks, Drama, Labor History, Service Workers, Sex Industry/Sexuality, Women

 

Your Loan is Denied (1992)

13 Jun

 

Synopsis: From Frontline, this production looks at the discriminatory practices by the banks of America and the dire consequences that result when the foremost mortgage-lending institutes set their loan protocol based on any color other than green. Brought to video by PBS, correspondent Bill Schechner introduces two African-American professionals, Peter and Dolores Green who are suing a Chicago area bank for refusing to finance the purchase of the home they have lived in for 30 years. In association with the Center for Investigative Reporting, this documentary shows the tragic effects of racial bias as entire neighborhoods find themselves fighting for economic survival.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Big Business/Corporations, Blacks, Documentary, Finance

 

Sounder (1972)

07 May

105m; U.S.

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield and Kevin Hooks

Synopsis (IMDB): The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. After some weeks or months, the wife and mother, Rebecca Morgan, sends the oldest son, who is about 11 years old, to visit his father at the camp. The trip becomes something of an odyssey for the boy. During the journey he stays a little while with a dedicated Black schoolteacher.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Farm & Food, Labor History, Legal System, Working Class

 
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