African-American Studies Collections

Filmography: E

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

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ELIZABETH COTTEN AND MIKE SEEGER IN CONCERT.
1980. 30 minutes.
Folklore, Performance. Mike Seeger. Elizabeth Cotten.

"Elizabeth Cotten toured throughout America into the 1970s-1980s with Mike Seeger. She was the 'grandmother' of the folk revival. Her music is clearly rooted in the folk traditions of the turn of the century. Her unique manner of finger style guitar playing (left handed but with the guitar strung up normal) produced a highly unusual sound and texture. It became so popular that it was called 'Cotten Picking'. Her composition Freight Train has become an American classic and has intrigued generations of guitarists. Since the late 1950s, Mike Seeger has been one of the leading performer-collectors of traditional music and a spokesman for the appreciation and study of the music of the Southern Appalachian region. Mike plays virtually all the instruments used in mountain music - fiddle, banjo, auto-harp, harmonica, dulcimer, guitar, mandolin, and Jew's harp- and sings tunes ranging from unaccompanied British ballads to country blues to Carter Family songs to old-time melodies."
Notes: Produced and directed by Keith Newman. Camera by Margaret Randle, Jack London, and Mark Hawthorne. Titles include: Elizabeth Cotton: Graduation March, Freight Train, Spanish Fandango, and Shake Sugaree. Mike Seeger: Hello Stranger, Little Margaret, Rollin' and Tumblin' Blues, Old Blink Drunk John, Waterboard, Bonaparte's Retreat, Don't Let Your Deal Go Down, The Dreadful Wind and Rain, and New Freedom March.


AN EVENING WITH THE ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATRE.
1984. 148 minutes. (V1976).
Dance/Ballet. Directed by Thomas Grimm.

A studio recording of several dances by the Ailey company: Divining was Judith Jamison's first major work as a choreographer for Ailey. The dance evokes a strong feeling of African tribal ritual and is set to hauntingly rhythmic drum music. Revelations expresses Ailey's intense feeling for his roots in the South. Here you'll see Ailey's vivid "blood memories" of the blues, spirituals, gospel music, ragtime and folk songs as well as the hard life of the Southern black during the Depression. The Stack-Up, set to modern jazz, takes place in modern-day Harlem. You'll witness the cruel reality of urban street life as a young man is destroyed by drugs. Cry was choreographed by Alvin Ailey in 1971 for Judith Jamison and is one of his most famous pieces. Created as a birthday present for his mother, it is Ailey's tribute to black women. You can't help being moved by the struggle, the anger and most importantly, the celebration.
Notes: Choreography by Judith Jamison (Diving), Ailey (Revelations & Cry) and Talley Beatty (The Stack Up).


EL OTRO SAN FRANCISCO see THE OTHER FRANCISCO


THE EMPEROR JONES.
1933. 73 minutes. (V134).
Melodrama. Paul Robeson. Eugene O'Neill. American Theater. American Literature. Directed by Dudley Murphey.

On an unnamed Caribbean Island, an American sailor is a king among the natives. He has a nice niche until he begins to abuse his powers and his subjects. The voodoo drum beats of rebellion soon begin to rise. The emperor loses his composure and succumbs to the fear of the savage death that may await him. The film is fascinating to watch if a little dated and stagebound. Paul Robeson portrays Eugene O'Neill's renegade hero. With: Dudley Diggs, Frank Wilson, Fredi Washington, and Ruby Elzy.
Notes: Photographed by Ernest Haller. Screenplay by DuBose Heyward. Incidental music composed and conducted by Frank Tours. Songs include I'm Travelin' and Water Boy [composer unidentified].


ETHNIC NOTIONS.
1986. 60 minutes. (V2097).
Documentary.

Uses images and artifacts first displayed by Janette Faulkner in her exhibit Ethnic Notions: Black Images in the White Mind: an exhibition of African-American stereotype and caricature from the collection of Janette Faulkner. The scope of Ethnic Notions is much broader than that of Black Shadows.... It deals with the fundamental character of racial stereotyping historically. From the representations of bucolic life as slaves, through the emergence of minstrelsy and black faced comics; from the broadly acted screen mammy to the easily frightened, slow witted black male, the film presents the negative images that helped shape many whites' attitudes towards Blacks.


EYES ON THE PRIZE.
1985. Total Running Time 360 minutes. (V1416).
Documentary. Civil Rights Movement -- History.

This six part series, 2 1/2 years in the making, is the most comprehensive television documentary on the American civil rights movement ever produced. Through rare historical film and incisive present-day interviews, the events and issues of the second American Revolution come to life. Return to the streets, churches, courts and schools where the struggle raged. Meet the people who challenged the system and changed history. Relive the pain, the protest, the sacrifice and triumph of the grass roots struggle for racial equality.

• Awakenings, focuses on the catalytic events of 1954-56. The Mississippi lynching of 14 year-old Emmett Till led to a widely publicized trial where a courageous black man took the stand and accused two white men of murder. In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat to a white man and triggered a year long boycott that resulted in the desegregation of public buses. Ordinary citizens and local leaders joined the black struggle for freedom. The SCLC was formed. In response, many white Southerners closed ranks in opposition to the burgeoning black rights movement. Racial discrimination finally became a political issue.
• Fighting Back (1957-62), follows the struggle for equality from the schoolroom to the courtroom and back as blacks reject the existing system of "separate but equal" education. In 1954, the Supreme Court also rejects the system in its historic Brown vs. Board Education decision. the legal battle won, in 1957 nine black teenagers dare to integrate Little Rock's Central High School. In 1962, a resolute James Meredith enrolls at the University of Mississippi. Students, parents, and lawyers unite to guarantee a better education, and a better future for their children.
• Ain't Scared of Your Jails (1960-61), chronicles the courage displayed by thousands of young people and college students who joined the ranks of the movement and gave it new direction. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South, many organized by the new, energetic Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1961, on the Freedom Rides, many young people faced violence and defied death threats as they labored to obliterate segregation in interstate bus travel below the Mason-Dixon line., The growing movement toward racial equality influenced the 1969 Presidential campaign; and federal versus state's rights became an issue.
• No Easy Walk (1962-66), explores a crucial phase in the civil rights movement - the emergence of mass demonstrations and marches as a powerful protest vehicle. In Albany, Georgia, police chief Laurie Pritchett challenged Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s tactics of nonviolent mass demonstration. In Birmingham, Alabama, school children steadfastly marched against the violent spray of fire hoses and were jailed as a result. the triumphant 1963 march on Washington, D.C. captured world wide attention and garnered broad national support, helping to shift federal policy.
• Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64), focuses on the extraordinary personal risks faced by ordinary citizens as they assumed responsibility for social change, particularly during the 1962-64 voting rights campaign in Mississippi. the state became a testing ground of constitutional principles as civil rights activists concentrated their energies on the right to vote. White resistance to the sharing of political power clashed with the strong determination of movement leaders to bring Mississippi blacks to the ballot box. In Freedom Summer 1964, tension between white resistance and movement activists climaxed in the tragic murder of three young civil rights workers.
• Bridge to Freedom (1965),the final episode. Lessons of a decade are brought to bear in the climactic 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, when thousands joined together to march fifty miles for freedom. During the drive to make voting rights a national issue, strategic and ideological differences began to surface between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s SCLC and the younger activists of SNCC. As white "backlash" and segregationist resistance intensified, President Lyndon B. Johnson promised to further the movements legislative goals. Then, as the movement began to splinter into factions, the Voting Rights Act became federal law.

Notes: Created by Executive Producer Henry Hampton. Produced and directed by Judith Vecchione. Series Writer, Steve Fayer.


EYES ON THE PRIZE II.
1989. 60 minutes. (Each of seven segments)

The second series on the history of the Civil Rights movement from 1964 to the present. AMERICA AT THE RACIAL CROSSROADS -- 1965-1985 is how the series is subtitled.

• Ain't Gonna Shuffle No More (1964-1972). An awareness and sense of pride emerged through the struggle of World Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay to be called by his new Islamic name, Muhammad ali. No longer content to use the mainstream culture as their standard and rejecting images which traditionally stereotyped them as servile and inferior, a new generation of African Americans began to redefine itself. Propelled by the Black Consciousness Movement, they celebrated black values and culture and their African roots. Howard University students demanded a more black-oriented curriculum, and African Americans of every persuasion met to forge a new unity at the Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana.
• The Time Has Come (1964-1965). During the decade of civil rights protest in the south, a sense of urgency and anger emerged from the black communities in the north. This urgency was best articulated by Malcolm X, then National Minister of the Nation of Islam. viewers follow the trajectory of Malcolm X's influence, both within the movement and outside. The program shows the influence of his philosophy on the staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) as they organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama as they issued the call for "Black Power" during the 1966 Meredith March Against Fear in Mississippi.
• Two Societies (1965-1968). Against the backdrop of the long hot summers of the mid-1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference went to Chicago in an attempt to apply southern movement tactics to the urban north. Their strategies were tested as they came up against the powerful political machinery of Mayor Richard Daley. A year later, in Detroit, frustration and anger built to urban violence as blacks and law officers clashed on city streets and America appeared to be a nation out of control.
• The Promised Land (1967-1968). In the final of Martin Luther King's life, the movement turned its attention to the economic issues confronting the nation and the ramblings of a far off war in Vietnam. Moved by the increasing level of poverty, Dr. King and his staff searched for a strategy to effect an economic redistribution of wealth. They began to organize a Poor People's Campaign, a march of the poor to Washington, D.C., where they would erect Resurrection City to embarrass and motivate a reluctant government. In the midst of organizing the campaign, Dr. King was called away to help black sanitation workers in Memphis. On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s was assassinated. Though devastated by the loss of their leader, King's staff struggled to continue the campaign. Soon after its construction, Resurrection City was shut down, marking the end of a chapter of the civil rights movement.
• Power! (1967-1968). Out of the ashes of the urban rebellions, blacks looked for new ways to take control of their communities; the ballot box, the street and the schools became the dominant platforms. In Cleveland, the black community, together with a segment of white voters, achieved an historic victory: the election of Carl Stokes as the first African American mayor of a major city. In Oakland, young black men and women attempted to confront continuing police harassment by forming the Black Panther Party. In Brooklyn, New York, black and Hispanic parents struggled to improve their children's education through community control of schools. While these efforts had varying degrees of success, they nevertheless resulted in greater empowerment for their communities.
• A Nation of Law? (1968-1971). By the late 1960s, the anger in poorer urban areas over charges of police brutality was smoldering. In Chicago, Fred Hampton formed a black Panther Party chapter. As the chapter grew, so did police surveillance. In a pre-dawn assault by the police, Panthers Hampton and Mark Clark were killed. The deaths came at a time when movement activists were increasingly becoming targets of police harassment of both the local and federal levels through COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program. During this same period inmates at New York's Attica prison took over the prison in an effort to publicize intolerable conditions. During the police assault which ended the takeover, several inmates and guards were killed. for some, Attica came to symbolize the brutality of hardened political regime.
• The Keys to the Kingdom (1974-1980). This show examines the relationship between law and popular struggle as it chronicles efforts to inject substance into promises to equality. The movement's focus is on the keys of the kingdom: jobs and education. In Boston, black parents organize to improve their children's education through court-ordered integration; the response of the white community was swift and often violent. In Atlanta, Mayor Maynard Jackson, the city's first black mayor, used the legal remedy of an affirmative action program to guarantee black involvement in the construction of Atlanta's airport. Affirmative action programs did not go unchallenged, however, as Allan Bakke took his suit against the University of California all the way to the Supreme Court.
• Back to the Movement (1979-mid 1980s). The series concludes with an examination of two cities - one southern, one northern. In Miami, Florida, viewers witness the destruction of Overtown, a once-thriving community, as if was ravaged by urban renewal and the construction of an interstate highway. Politically powerless, the community's economic plight was worsened by the steady arrival of another minority group - Cuban immigrants. in 1980, when white police officers were cleared of charges following the beating death of a black businessman, Miami's black community exploded in the largest riot since Detroit, 1967. In the north, frustrated by an unresponsive city administration, black Chicagoans successfully organized for political change through a reform candidate and brought about the election of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. The series ends with a look back at the people who made this movement a force for change in America. We listen to those who have worked for justice in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, as they reflect on their ongoing struggle. Viewers come to realize how far America has traveled to arrive at this racial crossroads.

Notes: Created by Executive Producer Henry Hampton. Produced and directed by Judith Vecchione. Series Writer, Steve Fayer.