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Category Archives: Blacks

Cry the Beloved Country (1951)

103m; U.S.

Director: Zoltan Korda

Synopsis: In the back country of South Africa, black minister Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) journeys to the city to search for his missing son, only to find his people living in squalor and his son a criminal. Reverend Misimangu (Sidney Poitier) is a young South African clergyman who helps find his missing son-turned-thief and sister-turned-prostitute in the slums of Johannesburg.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama

 

Daughters of the Dust (1991)

112m; U.S.

Director: Julie Dash

Cast: Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers and Barbarao

Synopsis: Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America. Set in 1902.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama

 

The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy (2009)

56m; U.S.

Director: Bob Hercules & Bruce Orenstein

Synopsis: Legendary organizer Saul Alinsky led the movement to empower disenfranchised communities through collective actions. Now others have taken up the challenge. The film examines Alinsky’s life and adaptive legacy through work being done by two contemporary “people’s organizations.” Case studies of his work in Rochester and recent IAF organizing work in Texas and Brooklyn.

 
 

Edge of the City (1957)

85m; U.S.

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast:  John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier and Jack Warden

Synopsis: Two New York City longshoremen Axel Nordmann, an Army deserter and Tommy Tyler, an easy-going freight car loader whose growing friendship is threatened by Charles Malik, a notably repellent punk.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Transportation, Working Class

 

Finally Got the News (1970)

55m; U.S.

Director: Bird, Gessner, Lichtman, Louis

Synopsis: FINALLY GOT THE NEWS is a forceful, unique documentary that reveals the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers inside and outside the auto factories of Detroit.

 

Freedom Road (1979)

186m; U.S.

Director: Ján Kadár

Cast: Muhammad Ali, Kris Kristofferson and Ron O’Neal

Synopsis: Based on the Howard Fast novel, this miniseries tells the story of ex-slave Gideon Young’s trip from freemen to Senator and in doing so tells the stories of the hopes of Reconstruction and its fall.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, War

 

Freedom Song (2000)

150m; U.S.

Director: Phil Alden Robinson

Cast: Danny Glover, Vicellous Reon Shannon and Vondie Curtis-Hall

Synopsis: HBO film based on the organizing of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in McComb, Mississippi and highlights the role of young people in the work

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Organizing

 

Freedom on My Mind (1994)

105m; U.S.

Director: Connie Field & Marilyn Mulford

Synopsis: Documentary about the civil rights movement, focusing on the Mississippi Freedom Summer voter registration project.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Organizing

 

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2008)

83m; U.S.

Director: Nancy D. Kates, Bennett Singer

Synopsis: Biography of Bayard Rustin, a socialist and pacifist activist involved in labor struggles and who became a key adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr. (including serving as the lead organizer for the 1963 March on Washington).  Film also explores the constant conflicts Rustin was forced into given treatment of homosexuals.

Contact: http://rustin.org/

 

At The River I Stand (1993)

56m; U.S.

Director: David Appleby, Allison Graham, Steven Ross

Synopsis: Documents the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and the historical forces which came together with the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. NOTE: see I Am A Man for a 10m version.

Opening Sequence