The above quotes are from Paul Robeson in relation to a 1935 picture he made for the filmmaker Zoltan Korda titled Sanders of the River. Based on the stories of Edgar Wallace, the film was set in Colonial Nigeria and the Hungarian-born Korda (brother of director, producer and writer Alexander […]
Sidney Poitier
A Raisin In The Sun (1961) a call to arms for the downtrodden, hardworking majority (Review)
With a screenplay by the original playwright (Lorraine Hansberry), and featuring Sidney Poitier, a debut from Louis Gossett Jr, and a powerful cast of African-American performers, A Raisin In The Sun provides us with a kitchen-sink drama for the Civil Rights movement. Set in Chicago, and based on Hansberry’s 1959 […]
Cinema Eclectica 163 – Chris Pratt’s D.I.Y. S.O.S.
The Defiant Ones (1958) one of the most crushing, pessimistic examples of the Hays Code in action (Review)
This summer, you might have already seen two very different people, chained together, forced to co-operate in order to escape their captivity. They even climbed out of a mud-pit; if you weren’t thinking about The Defiant Ones (about two chain-gang prisoners, one white and one black, in a similar mess) […]
Paris Blues (1962) Comes to Life with the Jazz and the Style (Review)
Here’s a less-than-fun fact; when Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues was released in 1961, the opening flirtation between Paul Newman and Diahann Carroll would have been a crime in 22 American states. Released on Blu-Ray fifty-five years later as part of the British Film Institute’s Black Star season, it is noticeable […]