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Lesson Before Dying
: essential video:On a bright sunny day in 1948, Jefferson (Mekhi Phifer) sets off down the road to go catch some fish; by the end of the movie's opening sequence, he is the one who's been caught, and wrongly accused of the murder of a white shopkeeper. Racial inequality, at the time, is so pervasive in Louisiana that the white defense lawyer's argument at Jefferson's trial is that his client is not worthy of conviction: 'You might just ...
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The Piano Lesson (1995)
: :The only one of August Wilson's plays to be filmed (and for television, at that), this 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winner is an amazing piece of work. Adapted by Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards, who staged it on Broadway, the play deals not just with racism and its effects but with the ongoing legacy and curse of slavery on modern blacks. Set in 1920s Pittsburgh, the story deals with the arrival of Boy Willie (Charles Dutton) from Mississippi, to ...
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Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
: :The only one of August Wilson's plays to be filmed (and for television, at that), this 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winner is an amazing piece of work. Adapted by Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards, who staged it on Broadway, the play deals not just with racism and its effects but with the ongoing legacy and curse of slavery on modern blacks. Set in 1920s Pittsburgh, the story deals with the arrival of Boy Willie (Charles Dutton) from Mississippi, to ...
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Roots 6 Video Box Set
: essential video:From the moment the young Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) is stolen from his life and ancestral home in 18th-century Africa and brought under inhumane conditions to be auctioned as a slave in America, a line is begun that leads from this most shameful chapter in U.S. history to the 20th-century author Alex Haley, a Kinte descendant. The late Haley's acclaimed book Roots was adapted into this six-volume television miniseries, which was a widely watched phenomenon in ...
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My Sweet Charlie
: essential video:From the moment the young Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) is stolen from his life and ancestral home in 18th-century Africa and brought under inhumane conditions to be auctioned as a slave in America, a line is begun that leads from this most shameful chapter in U.S. history to the 20th-century author Alex Haley, a Kinte descendant. The late Haley's acclaimed book Roots was adapted into this six-volume television miniseries, which was a widely watched phenomenon in ...
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The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
: essential video:This 1973 television movie about 110 years of American history as seen through the eyes of a black woman from Louisiana (Cicely Tyson) is a terrific achievement, a window onto racism from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. Tyson gives a career performance as the title character, whose personal life is inextricably woven into the fabric of the African American struggle for equality. A mixture of the sentimental and the unflinching, this is the ...
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Mandela & De Klerk
: :Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine both received Emmy nominations for their performances in this made-for-TV movie. The plot follows Nelson Mandela's 27-year struggle to end apartheid. That segregation was abolished without bloodshed also had much to do with the political maneuverings of South African President F.W. de Klerk, played with convincing and tired resolution by Caine. Poitier plays the more powerful personality, and shines as the self-assured leader. Filmed in Cape Town, this extremely talky and sometimes static ...
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Tuskegee Airmen
: :This true story of the black flyers who broke the color barrier in the U.S. Air Force during World War II is a well-intentioned film highlighted by an excellent cast. Proud, solemn, Iowa-born Laurence Fishburne and city-kid hipster Cuba Gooding Jr. are among the hopefuls who meet en route to Tuskegee Air Force Base, where they are among the recruits for an 'experimental' program to 'prove' the abilities of the black man in the U.S. armed services. Fighting ...
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Mama Flora's Family
: :This true story of the black flyers who broke the color barrier in the U.S. Air Force during World War II is a well-intentioned film highlighted by an excellent cast. Proud, solemn, Iowa-born Laurence Fishburne and city-kid hipster Cuba Gooding Jr. are among the hopefuls who meet en route to Tuskegee Air Force Base, where they are among the recruits for an 'experimental' program to 'prove' the abilities of the black man in the U.S. armed services. Fighting ...
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For Us the Living
: :This true story of the black flyers who broke the color barrier in the U.S. Air Force during World War II is a well-intentioned film highlighted by an excellent cast. Proud, solemn, Iowa-born Laurence Fishburne and city-kid hipster Cuba Gooding Jr. are among the hopefuls who meet en route to Tuskegee Air Force Base, where they are among the recruits for an 'experimental' program to 'prove' the abilities of the black man in the U.S. armed services. Fighting ...
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