African-American Studies Collections

Filmography: D

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

---

DANCE BLACK AMERICA.
1984. 87 minutes.
Documentary. Performance. African-American Dance Troupes. Dance Festivals.

A film that documents a four-day festival of dancers and dance companies held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984, celebrating the scope and history of African-American dance heritage. Many of the major black American dance corps and choreographers participated in the four day event.
Notes: Produced by D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus. Narrated by Geoffrey Holder.


DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST.
1991. 113 minutes.
Drama. African-American family life. Sea Islands Folklife and customs. Women Directors. Directed by Julie Dash. August 19, 1902.

This film is about the anticipation the Peassaint family of Ebo Landing on one of the Georgia Sea Islands have for moving North. It is about the glory and belief in family and heritage and in oral traditions. The film is rich in colors and images -- it is beautiful to watch and the cast is uniformly graceful and handsome. There is a richly subtle tendency of the filmmakers to indulge in retrospective romanticism about life in this culture. The film is almost too lyrical in its narrative. With: Cora Lee Day as Nana Peasant, Barbara-O as Yellow Mary, Cheryl Lynn Bruce as Viola, Tommy Hicks as Mr. Snead, Kaycee Moore, Alva Rogers as Eula, Adisa Addison as Eli, Trula Hoosier as Trula, Umar Abdurrahman as Bilal Mohammed and also with Geraldine Dunston, Vertamae Grosvenor Cornell Royal.
Notes: Screenplay by Julie Dash. Edited by Amy Carey, Joseph Burton. Original Music by John Barnes. Cinematography by Arthur Jafa. Winner Best Cinematography Award, Sundance Festival.


DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT.
1988. 60 minutes.
Documentary. Ralph McGill and the Atlanta Constitution. Segregation in the South. Media Studies. Biography. Directed by Kathleen Dowdey and Jed Dannenbaum. Subtitled Ralph McGill and the Segregated South.

This film is a study of the life and works of the crusading, defiant editor of the Atlanta Constitution Ralph McGill. Born in Tennessee, graduate of Vanderbilt, he gained legendary status as a beacon of reason and fairness as editorial writer and columnist for the Atlanta paper during the struggle against segregation in the south. Interviews with family, friends, and colleagues. With Burt Lancaster as the voice of Ralph McGill. Produced in conjunction with the Center for Contemporary Media. Among those interviewed are Sander Vanocur, Andrew Young, Judy Gebre-Hiwet, Claude Sitton, Herman Talmadge, Tom Brokaw, John Lewis, Ralph McGill, Jr., Julian Bond, Vernon Jordan, Nan Pendergrast, William Emerson, Exrnona Clayton, John Popham, Robert Carter, Harry Ashmore, M. Carl Holman, Lucy Grigsby, Dan Carter, John Calhoun, Bill Kovach, Mary Lynn Morgan, and Myles Horton.
Notes: Written by Dowdey and Dannenbaum. Edited by Dowdey. Photographed by Edwin Myers. Music by Jurielle Hodler-Hamilton and Joel Hamilton.


DEAD PRESIDENTS.
1995. 119 minutes.
Social Drama. Crime Melodrama. African-American Family Life. African-American Directors. Directed by Allen And Albert Hughes Brothers.

The Hughes Brothers, after their impressive debut with Menace II Society have returned with this ambitious epic about the emergence of an urban sensibility among blacks as a result of the tumultuous '60s. Larenz Tate plays Anthony, a Bronx youth whose dreams of a good life, turn in on him after his return from Vietnam. His struggle to maintain his marriage and family is an endless and ultimately losing battle. Already on the edge of a criminal life, he helps plan a the robbery of a shipment of old dollars scheduled to be shipped to Washington for burning. The heist, ends violently, tragically. Anthony, the soul survivor, faces a justice system he no longer understands. The scope of this film is huge -- the Hughes' attempt to offer a very specific type of African-American experience of the '60s and Vietnam partially fails because they try too give much too much. Anthony's descent into hopelessness seems too artificial -- the forces that frustrate him do not seem to bear too much scrutiny. The story and continuity seem forced, creating a sense that something has been left out. With: Keith David, Chris Tucker, N'Bushe Wright, Freddy Rodriguez, Bokeem Woodbine, Rose Jackson, Michael Imperiole, Jenifer Lewis, James Pickens, Jr..
Notes: Music Supervisor, Bonnie Greenberg. Music by Danny Elfman. Photography by Lisa Rinzler. Written by Michael Henry Brown from a story by Brown and Allen and Albert Hughes.


THE DEADLY DECEPTION.
1993. 60 minutes.
Documentary. Syphilis, Study and Research. Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. Macon County, Alabama. Race and Medicine. A segment of the PBS/WGBH program Nova.

This program investigates one of the most notorious medical experiments in American history: the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. African-American men in Macon County, Alabama believed they were receiving free treatment for syphilis; they were, instead, given medicines that were worthless against the disease. The experiment continued from 1932 until 1972 and was periodically written up in mainstream medical journals. The program outlines the history of the study, offers testimony from survivors and from the doctors who administered it, and looks at what many consider at the perversion of medical ethics and the doctor/patient relationship involved in carrying out such an experiment. It also discusses the lingering mistrust of the white medical establishment created by the study.
Notes: Narrated by George Straight. Among those interviewed include Vanessa Gamble (Historian of Medicine, MD Ph.D.), Allan Brandt (Historian of Medicine and Science), Herman Shaw (Study subject), Mary Hardy (Tuskegee Nurse), John Cutler (Tuskegee Study Researcher), James Jones (Historian, author of Bad Blood), Jay Katz (Professor of Law and Psychiatry), Bill Jenkins (Epidemiologist, CDC), Peter Buxton (Public Health worker, CDC), Gene Stollerman (CDC Review Panel, 1969), David Sencer (Director, CDC 1966-77), Charles Pollard (Study subject). Notes: Written, produced, and directed by Denisce DiAnni. Edited by Charles Scott. Camera by Robert Shepard, Brian Dowley, Bill Mills. Original music composed by John Kusiak. Voice over narration by Bill Mason.


DEATH OF A PROPHET.
1981. 60 minutes. (V3166).
Biographical Drama -- Malcolm X. Directed by Woodie King, Jr.

Morgan Freeman plays Malcolm X in this tersely done, fairly objective look at the last days of his life. The film is almost documentary like in its approach. Morgan's performance is honest and direct. Yolanda King (the daughter of Reverend Martin Luther King) plays Malcolm's wife. The supporting cast includes Mansoor Najee-ullah, Sam Singleton, Tommie Hicks, Yusef Iman, sonny Jim Gaines, Kirk Kirksey, Charles Griffin, James DeJongh and Salaelo Mareid.
Notes: In the early segments of the film Ossie Davis, Yuri Kochiyama and Amiri Baraka express their own memories of Malcolm and of the fateful day of his death. Davis narrates the film. Photographed by Robert Achs. Written and produced by Woodie King, Jr. Music scored and performed by Max Roach.


THE DEFIANT ONES.
1958. 96 minutes. (V399).
Racial Melodrama. Race Relations. Prison Dramas. Directed by Stanley Kramer.

Two convicts, chained together, escape from a prison road gang. One of the men is black, the other white. They fight one another bitterly, even after escaping, but slowly the men grow to trust and depend on one another. In the end their efforts to escape the same common enemy -- the brutal chain gang jailers inevitably binds them. Well acted and well meaning symbolic social drama from the late '50s. With: Sidney Poitier, Tony Curtis, Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw, Cara Williams, and Lon Chaney Jr. The screenplay by Harold Jacob Smith and Nathan E. Douglas and the black and white cinematography by Sam Leavitt won Academy Awards.
Notes: Academy Award nominations for best picture, actor (Curtis and Poitier), supporting actor (Bikel), supporting actress (Williams), director, original screenplay, and editing. Score by Ernest Gold. A made for television version with Robert Uhrich and Carl Weathers was made in 1986. See the original film.


DELTA BLUES SINGER: JAMES "SONNY FORD" THOMAS.
197-. 44 minutes. (V4036). Documentary.
Delta Blues. Folklore, Southern. A film by Bill and Josette Ferris.

A film that looks at the home and musical life of delta blues musicians James "Sonny Ford" Thomas, Christine Thomas, J.W. "Sonny Boy" Watson, and Shelby "Poppa Jazz" Brown. Shot in black and white, the film records the look and feel of rural, delta rhythm and blues -- jam sessions in homes and cheap juke joints. The images we see on the screen are not wholly in sync with the musical track nor the voice overs by the subjects of the film. This objective kind of film making makes the lifestyle of these rural poor seem like something truly foreign -- but the simple pleasures of these people, like the music, is ultimately sad, and the film makers, perhaps unconsciously, shows us the sadness of the blues and the poverty.
Notes: Produced for the Center for Southern Folklore.


DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS.
1995. 101 minutes.
Suspense Drama. Detection Melodrama. Blacks in Los Angeles, 1940s. Moseley, Walter. African American Directors. African American Authors. Directed by Carl Franklin.

Denzell Washington is Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, a war veteran from Houston who settled in post WW II Los Angeles because of the abundance of jobs. Smart, independent, and cool under pressure Easy gets a job helping a hood track down a beautiful woman for a politician. Easy unexpectedly finds himself deep in a Los Angeles mess. This is director Carl Franklin's second film (the first was the first rate action melodrama One False Move) and it is a work of an assured, confident master craftsman. The film is a period piece about a Los Angeles of less than 50 years ago, a Los Angeles where a man of color had to confront prejudices not as explicit or as open as they were down south. The miracle of this film, and in Denzell's performance as Easy, is that Franklin doesn't push those facts down our throats. It's there, the audience knows it, but its part of the texture of the world Easy lives in, it doesn't drive the story, it doesn't smack us in the face. Devil in the Blue Dress is a marvel of style, wit and grace. The rest of the cast -- Tom Sizemore as the smart thug Dewitt Albright, Jennifer Beals as Daphne Monet, Maury Chaykin as Matthew Terrell, Terry Kinney as Todd Carter, Mel Winkler as Jesse, and Albert Hall as Odell are picture perfect types for the detective genre. The performance that knocks you for a loop, however, is Don Cheadle's Mouse, a funny, cunning little killer whose moments on the screen just sizzle. This is top notch movie making -- first rate ensemble acting that goes down like fine wine and great jazz.
Notes: Music by Elmer Bernstein. Photographed by Tak Fujimoto [Fujimoto's ability to evocatively photograph '40s LA was evident in Goldie Hawn's under rated Swing Shift]. Screenplay by Jonathan Demme and Edward Saxon based on Walter Moseley book of the same name. Box-office gross: $16,000,000.


DEVIL'S DAUGHTER.
1939. 70 minutes.
African-American Cinema. Race Pictures. Voodoo Melodrama. Directed by Arthur Leonard.

A beautiful young woman goes to Jamaica to take-over the plantation left to her by her father. She encounters voodoo and intrigue and sibling rivalry on the land she has inherited. Like many of the "race pictures" of the '30s and '40s, this was simply a typical genre piece retold with an all black cast of actors. Nina Mae McKinney is an alluring, effective heroine. To see her to even more and, maybe, better effect, one should see her performance in King Vidor's all black epic for MGM Hallelujah!
Notes: Produced by Leonard. Musical score by John Killam. Narrated by Leon White. Photographed by Jay Resche.


DIDN'T WE RAMBLE ON.
1989. 14 minutes.
Documentary. African-American music. Marching Bands, African-American.

"This joyful film will delight people of all ages. It shows how the spirit and soul of the West African people has been passed down, generation by generation, through the black marching band. As long as seven hundred years ago, the Yanuba's had musical processions at funerals to celebrate the passage of the spirit into the next world. By the 17th century, African musicians were seen in Turkish marching bands and their sill was admired by the monarchs of Europe. In the U.S. black fife and drum bands played during the Revolutionary War to keep up the spirit of the troops. In modern times, the tradition of the black marching band continues on the football fields of America. Dizzy Gillespie proudly introduces us to the skillfully orchestrated maneuvers of the Florida A&M Marching Band. He points out that this contemporary band is the direct fulfillment of an Ageless ancestral idea. In New Orleans today, a jazz procession is an integral part of the funeral observance. No matter how rich or how poor, the deceased is celebrated with a grand and festive send off. Even the children have learned to use the music of their bodies and dance to the spirit within. They will pass this tradition on to their children."
Notes: Narrated by Dizzy Gillespie. A film by Billy Jackson. Researcher, Dr. Carl Atkins. Script consultants, Steve Fayer and Lou Potter. Edited by Frank Galvin.


DIRTY GERTIE FROM HARLEM.
1946. 60minutes. (V1819)
African-American Cinema. Race Pictures. W. Somerset Maugham, Adaptations. African-American Directors. An all-black cast version of W. Somerset Maugham's Rain. Directed by Spencer Williams.

In this version a joy-loving young woman from the states goes down to a Caribbean island to play with her traveling troupe of dancers and singers. In actuality, Gertie is running from a man she jilted. Like Sadie Thompson, Gertie drives a puritanical minister to distraction. In the end she is killed by her crazed, repressed lover. As film versions of Maugham's play go Dirty Gertie. . . is an interesting entry. It has just the right amount of tawdriness, but is under-produced as many of these films of necessity were. With: Francine Everett, Don Wilson, Katherine Moore, "Piano" Frank, Spencer Williams and July Jones.
Notes: Original story and adaptation by True T. Thompson. Produced by Bert Goldberg. Original story and adaptation by True T. Thompson. Produced by Bert Goldberg.


DISCRIMINATION & AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT LOAN PROCESSING.
Duration Tape 1, 70 minutes. Tape 2, 120 minutes.
Congressional Hearings. Red Lining. Discriminatory Practices in Lending. Congressional Hearings.

Videotape of C-SPAN's broadcast of hearings on alleged loan discrimination practices by the Agricultural Department held by the Congressional Black Caucus recorded on 4/23/97. Committee chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters [D. California]. Among the panel [Rep. Richard Gephardt and Rep. William Clay Missouri, Rep. Danny Davis, Illinois, Rep. Bobby Scott, Virginia; Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi; Rep. Donna Christian-Green, Virgin Islands; Rep. Eva Clayton [N.C.]; Rep. Elijah Cummings [Maryland]; Dallas Smith [Acting Under Secretary Dept. of Agriculture] and Dan Glickman [Secretary of Agriculture]. The hearings were held in the wake of African-American farmers' concerns over apparent discriminatory practices in dispensing loans, especially in the Southern farm belt. The first tape includes introduction of Congressional Black Caucus members on the hearing panel and the preliminary introductions of other figures addressing and testifying on the issue. Others present at the hearings include John Boyd, President, National Black Farmers Association, Gladys Todd [North Carolina Farmer], Cecil Brewington [North Carolina Farmer], Gary Grant [North Carolina Farmer], Phil Haynie [Virginia Farmer], Eddie Slaughter [Georgia Farmer], Lawrence Lucas [Dept. of Agriculture Coalition of Minority Employees - President., James Myart [Attorney].


DISTORTED IMAGE: STEREOTYPE AND CARICATURE IN AMERICA 1850-1922.
198?. 30 minutes.
Racial Stereotype. Stereotypical Cartoons, Literature, and Arts. Ethnic Humor.

Using stills from photographs, cartoons, and advertisements. The filmmakers make excellent use of magazine and editorial caricatures to explain how un-subtle and acceptable racial and ethnic stereotyping by the most American popular media including such publications as Puck, Life from the mid-19th Century through the end of World War I.
Notes: Produced by Zirel Handle. Executive Producer, Samuel Life. Consultant, Oscar Cohen. Narrated by Joseph Julia. Distributed by the New York Anti-Defamation League. Based on research and collections held by John and Selma Appel.


DO THE RIGHT THING.
1989. 120 minutes. (V2399).
Race Relations, New York. African-American Directors.

This was probably the most controversial film of 1989. In this film Spike Lee takes the ethnic tensions of New York and tosses it out to film audiences like a social molotov. The thing blows up and shards of uncertainties prick everybody. The story is about the day in the life of Sal's Pizzeria, a pizza parlor owned by an Italian in what has become a predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood. On that hot summer's day events spiral toward a tragic and chaotic end as Sal and his customers come to grips with the tumultuous ethnic and racial tensions that seemed to dominate New York life in Mayor Ed Koch's last two terms. Though the film portends to be about broader themes of racial intolerance it is a New York film all the way. Though Lee is adamant in his rejection of being called a "black Woody Allen" it is equally clear that like Allen, his world is also New York City. Do The Right Thing is the most fitting tribute to the 1980's in New York City imaginable. It's confusion is the city's confusion and so are its attitudes. No matter what the rest of the country might share in social ills and problems Do The Right Thing shows what those issues look like in a very unique place. With: Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Danny Aiello, Giancarlo Esposito, Spike Lee, Bill Nunn, John Turturro, and John Savage.
Notes: Music by Bill Lee. Photographed by Ernest Dickerson. Produced Written and Directed by Spike Lee. 1989. 120minutes.


DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE.
1994. 52 minutes.
Documentary. Sonja Stone, Professor. Black Cultural Center, Controversy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Directed by David Merritt II.

Subtitled The Fight For A Free Standing Black Cultural Center at UNC is a well edited and produced film about the controversy over African-American student demand for a Black Cultural Center at UNC Chapel Hill. The issue dominated the campus in the late '80s and early 1990s and produced divisive attitudes, at least among student activists. As the movement for the Center gathered national attention, it became necessary for its proponents and detractors to explain their roles. This film explores the emotions and politics of the BCC controversy with relative objectivity. It is an excellent artifact for informing the UNC community about the activities behind the newspaper stories and TV soundbites over issues like the rally with filmmaker Spike Lee and Nation of Islam's Khalid Muhammad and the sit-ins in 1992.
Notes: Among those interviewed: Margo Crawford [former director BCC], Darren Allen [Editor, Carolina Review], Billy Stansbury [Vice Chairman of UNC Young Republicans], Prof. Chuck Stone [Journalism], John Bradley [BAC], Staci Hill [BCC Ambassador], Tim Smith [BAC], Dr. Harold Wallace [Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs], Scott Wilkins [former Campus Y President], Sujata Narayan, Kanwaz Rahman, Michelle Thomas, Carolyn McDonald, [students at UNC], Paul Hardin [Chancellor of UNC], Pamela Cheek [Asst. Director of Campus Y]. Produced by Merritt, Nolyn Mason, Charles Debose. Volunteers include Kahalilah Boone, Kathy Binder and Charles Johnson. Original Soundtrack written/arranged by Juzon Fleming. Original Hip Hop tracks by Broken Sticks Music.


DON'T PLAY US CHEAP.
1972. 95 minutes
Musical comedy. African-American folk tales. African-American Directors. Melvin Van Peebles.

Two of the devils' lackeys are sent to disrupt or corrupt a Harlem party thrown by Miss Maybell. Whatever devilment they can cause at the Saturday night soiree is will satisfy their master but the two find themselves having as good a time as the partygoers. This film of a stage production is filled with songs of mirth and joy that range from gospel like to rhythm and blues to funk. The entire cast seems to relish their roles, and their pleasure is infectious. The singing is boisterous and convivial, the story ribald and outlandish. The music and songs, all by Ven Peebles reflects a wide range of types of black music. Van Peebles' visual imagery in this film is not unlike of his regular features of the time Sweet Sweetback. . . and The Story of a Three Day Pass. While previewing this film, a young friend wondered if I was watching a recording of Goodtimes the series the film's lead, Esther Rolle starred in the middle and late '70s. That should give you a clue as to how the picture looks and how the images and characterizations play. This lowbrow stereotyping was obviously deliberate by Van Peebles. He was clearly aiming to invoking working class humor similar to the Simple stories of James Weldon Johnson. The cast includes Esther Rolle as Miss Maybell, Avon Long, Mabel King [dressed in an outlandish pink outfit and blonde Shirley Temple wig], Rhetta Hughes, Frank Carey, Thomas Anderwson, Robert Dunn, Jay Wanleer, Joshie Jo Armstead, Joseph Keyes. And George "Coppee" McCurn.
Notes: Musical Score by Melvin Van Peebles. Musical supervision by Harold Wheeler. Photographed by Bob Maxwell.


THE DOUBLE DEAL.
1939. 78 minutes. (V1820).
Melodrama. Race Pictures. Directed by Arthur Dreifuss.

An all black cast stars in the murder/robbery melodrama. The action takes place around a night club owned by the head of a gang of robbers. When the loot from a heist is lifted form the cafe owner's safe, the thief tires to blame it on the lover of the cafe's chanteuse, a man with whom he has a big rivalry. This is one of the slickest of the all black features made in the 1930s. It is a well paced action melodrama, though not much better than any B movie imitation of the gangster genre. With: Monte Hawley as Jim McCoy, Jeni Le Gon as Nita Walker, Eddie Thompson as Dude Markey, Florence O'Brien as Sally, Freddie Jackson as Tommy McCoy, Maceo Sheffield as Murray, Buck Woods as Sharpie, Tommy Southern as Eric, Vernon McCalla as the Inspector, Jack Clissby as Xavier, Arthur Ray as Harmon, and Shelton Brooks as himself.
Notes: Screenplay by Arthur Hoerl and Flourney E. Miller. Photography by Mack Stengler. Songs include: Jitterbugs Cuttin' Rugs and Hole in the Wall by Shelton Brooks and Gettin' In Right With You by Peter Titurin and Harry Tobias.


DOUBLES: JAPAN AND AMERICA'S INTERCULTURAL CHILDREN.
1995. 59 minutes.
Documentary. Intercultural Children. Japanese - American Relations. Mixed Blood Children. Children of American GIs. Directed by Regge Life.

"September 2, 1945. The instrument of surrender is signed ending the war in the Pacific against Japan. Under the reign of General Douglas MacArthur, Japan enters its first period of occupation. Despite orders forbidding it, fraternization between United States soldiers and Japanese women, results in a number of children being born in and out of wedlock. some of the children were fortunate enough to leave Japan, but many stayed and some were abandoned by both father and mother. As we remember WWII, what has become of these children? Since the end of the war, Japan itself has risen form the ashes to become an economic giant and in contrast, many American women have intermarried with Japanese men producing anew generation of intercultural children who are growing up in both America and in Japan. What is life like for them in Japan? In America? What about the generation of intercultural who can trace their roots back to the turn of the century and even before--where are they today? " Among those interviewed are Japanese expert Donald Richie and Father Neal Lawrence. Among the children of mixed heritage interviewed: Debbie Brune, Stephen Murphy-Schigematsu, Ray Downs, Kasumi Kitabatake, Maya Moore, Toshikazu Kiyonaga, Hitomi Ishiyama, Mari Christine, Thomas Kent, Takashi Norris, Scott, Watanabe, Amy Hill, Anthony Brown, Teresa Williams, Bobby Allen, Patricia Allen Smith, Curtis Rooks, Susan Hacker, Tokiwa Taft, Ellen Krout Hasegawa, Keiko Gibson.
Notes: Narrated by Joe Morton. Music by Yosuke Yamashita. Videographer, Hisazumi Shimazu. Associate Producer, Masko Izutsu. Advisors: Jackson Bailey, Ph.D., John Dower, Ph.D., Velina Hasu, Houston and others.


A DRY WHITE SEASON.
1989. 107 minutes. (V2587).
Soweto Uprisings. Apartheid Drama. Social Drama. South Africa, Politics and Government. Women Directors. Directed by Euzhan Palcy.

Palcy's first big budget film. Ben du Toit is a quiet, happy school teacher in South Africa leading a life secure from turmoil at the heart of the country's existence until his gardener seeks his help in finding out what has happened to his son, who was arrested in the wake of the Soweto massacres. The boy is killed and later, the father, when the authorities learn of du Toit's efforts to find the truth of the boys death and imprisonment. Du Toit becomes dedicated to gaining justice for Gordon Ngubene's and his family, all of whom eventually die. Du Toit's efforts alienates him from most of his family and relations. The film is part of a genre that film makers have found an attractive source of melodrama -- the corrosive and morally corrupt system of apartheid in South Africa. Like most of the films on the subject thus far (with the notable exception A World Apart), there is no feel for the complexity of emotions and politics that rages in the country. We are given the evil of the repression and brutality and can identify with the victims, but some part of what apartheid really is, and how it corrupts and destroys will never be adequately presented in films which try to present it in conventional melodramatic terms. The villains are too easy as marks, like Nazis in the 1940s films. As long as the Afrikaner are presented as one dimensional objects on the screen, the presentation of apartheid on screen will remain unreal to some. Chris Menges' A World Apart deals with that difficult concept best. A Dry White Season at times, has no real emotional depth. At other times the true spirit of the fight against apartheid is honestly presented not in words alone. but in shocking scenes of the violence -- action, images and sounds like the moments at the film's beginning when the doomed, courageous Soweta children confront the armed soldiers singing Joseph Shaballa's haunting chants Unomathemba and Umusa With: Donald Sutherland, Janet Suzman, Jurgen Prochnow, Zakes Mokae, Susan Sarandon, and Marlon Brando.
Notes: Screenplay by Colin Welland and Palcy. Music by Dave Grusin. Academy Award nomination for Brando as best supporting actor.


DRY WOOD.
1977. 37 minutes. (V763).
Documentary. Directed by Les Blank.

The life and music of black Cajuns of Louisiana. The music is by "Boisec" Ardoin and Canray Fontenot. The film focuses on the lives of two families who raise rice in the bayou and the rustic lifestyle of the people and the place.
Notes: Edited, photographed by Blank. Subtitles by Russel Dupuis.


DU COTE DE MEMPHIS.
1979. 55 minutes. (V4011).
Documentary. Folk Life in the American South -- History of the Center for Southern Culture [Bill Ferris and Judy Peiser's research].

A segment of the French program Tresors Des Cinematheque. An overview of Southern folk culture made by French film makers. Many scenes from the work done by the Center for Southern Culture are included. Bill Ferris is interviewed in some depth. The entire region is covered by the filmmakers -- Black DJs in Jackson Mississippi; a look at the historic Beale Street's juke joints etc.
Notes: Images by Jean Claude Larrier. Montage by Michel Pinard. Realisztion par Rene Jean Bouyer. Produced by Bernard Ferran.


THE DUKE IS TOPS.
1938. 70 minutes.
Musical Romance. Musical Comedy. Race Pictures. All Black Cast Features. Directed by William Nolte.

Lena Horne plays a singer whose career blossoms when she splits with her bandleader partner, (played by Ralph Cooper) in this musical diversion about show business, especially vaudeville and small time traveling shows. The story is fairly mechanical and Horne is plump and sassy. Ralp Cooper is a dapper, charming leading man. The music is just so-so with the liveliest number performed by the Basin Street Boys. Lawrence Creiner, Monte Hawley, Vernon McCalla, Edward Thompson, Neva Peoples, Everett Brown, The Basin Street Boys. Notes: Screenplay adaptation by Phil Durham. Photographed by Harry M. Popkin.


THE DUTCHMAN.
1967. 55 minutes.
Drama. Race. Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka. African-American Authors. American Theaters. Directed by Anthony Harvey.

This is a terse, angry film of Leroi Jones corrosively angry one act play. A young, middle class black man is spotted by an attractive young white woman at a New York subway station. When she boards the train she immediately begins to seduce him. This seduction, however, is an act of provocation. She goads and humiliates the man into a towering rage. When the interplay seems turned against her, she kills him with a knife. As the film ends we see her approach another black man. This is film and theater as metaphor and parable. Jones/Baraka has created a parable of race, sex and class in America that seethes with anger at the constant assault on black male frustration. It's a daring film, diatribe as art. Al Freeman, Jr. and Shirley Knight give astonishing performances.
Notes: Photographed by Gerry Turpin. Music composed and conducted by John Barry. Best film, 1967 Cannes Film Festival.