African-American Studies Collections

Filmography: L

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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LADY SINGS THE BLUES.
1972. 144 minutes. (V279).
Biographical Melodrama. Billie Holiday. Directed by Sidney J. Furie.

A film biography of singer Billie Holliday. Diana Ross plays Holliday. The tragic story of the great jazz artists has a great deal of emotional power and an excellent performance from Ross, but it is a downer. What one can not really expect to get from this film is the complex nature of Holiday's drug dependency and its source. It's part white-wash so that Lady Day becomes just another victim. Regardless of this effort to sanitize or excuse Holiday's life, its a stunning achievement for Ross in her film debut, and a feat she would not repeat on screen. The rest of the cast: Richard Pryor, Billy Dee Williams, James Callahan, Paul Hampton, and Sid Melton are altogether, very fine. Williams and Ross are a terrific romantic screen pairing.
Notes: The songs include "Them There Eye" and "Strange Fruit" are performed by Ross in a fashion to evokes rather than imitates Holiday -- she and Ross are such different kinds of stylist -- but the effect and power are quite the same. Screenplay by Terence McCloy, Chris Clark, and Suzanne de Passe from the book by Billie Holiday and William Dufty. Camera by John Alonzo. Produced by Berry Gordy, Jr.


THE LANDLORD.
1970. 110 minutes.
Comedy Drama. Social Comedy. Urban Gentrification. Directed by Hal Ashby.

The gifted filmmaker Hal Ashby made his directorial in this finely tuned comedy drama about a wealthy young man's journey into a Brooklyn ghetto. When Elgar Enders decides to move to a property he owns in Brooklyn, he wants to evict the tenants and renovate the place. He has a change of heart when he gets there and decides to live among his new tenants. The Landlord is charming, witty, good-humored and intelligent. It's a comedy with a sharp social perspective about race and love. One of the finer American films of the early '70s. With: Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, Walter Brooke, Lou Gossett, Marki Bey, Melvin Stewart, Susan Anspach, Robert Klein, Will MacKenzie.
Notes: Music by Al Kooper. Screenplay by Bill Gunn based on a novel by Kristin Hunter. Produced by Norman Jewison. Photographed by Gordon Willis.


THE LAST SUPPER.
1976. 120 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles. (V1829).
Cuba. Slavery, Cuba. Slave revolts. Directed by Tomas Guitterrez Alea.

A titled land owner in colonial Cuba tries to seek penance by offering twelve of his slaves a "last supper" with himself as the Christ figure. His seemingly benevolent act backfires when the slaves revolt the next day against the brutal overseer. A powerful film from Castro's Cuba. The film is hopelessly fatalistic, and at times has some of the effects that one would hope would be in a film of Melville's great, ominous classic Benito Cereno. Alea is a great director. With: Nelson Villagra.


THE LEARNING TREE.
1969. 107 minutes. (V1643).
African-American Directors. Produced and directed by Gordon Parks.

The story of the learning tree is that of a young black teenager growing up in the deep south of the 1930s. The young man witnesses racial bigotry and violence, but also comes to grips with his personal since of values. Newt is a young boy who witnesses a murder committed by a white man. A black man is accused. Newt fearing white reaction. When he finally tells the truth the real murderer (who is white) commits suicide. The innocent black man is killed by the bigoted sheriff. Newt leaves his home much embittered. The Learning Tree is elegantly photographed and its narrative flow is simple and straightforward though a little melodramatic. Parks deals with the complexity of racial tensions in his story in a manner unique to films before his effort here. With: Kyle Johnson, Alex Clark, Estelle, Evans, Dana Elcar, Mira Walters and Joel Fluellen.


THE LEGACY OF A DREAM.
1974. 29 minutes. (V651).
Documentary. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Movement.

A history of Dr. Martin Luther King's non-violent movement and its relevance today. It summarizes, in a moving way, the public life of Martin Luther King, and delineates his central role in the Civil Rights campaigns which had so forceful an impact on American society. Narrated by James Earl Jones.


LEGACY OF LIFESTYLES see THE AFRICANS


LEMONADE SUITE.
1980. 27 minutes. (V433).
Short Stories. Gwendolyn Brooks.

Lemonade Suite is a poignant story based on poems by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks. The tale is that of a young black girl who meets and fall love with a young boy who later abandons her, leaving her alone and pregnant.
Notes: Produced by the Audio-Visual Center of Indiana University. Music by Kenneth L. Ware.


LET'S DO IT AGAIN.
1975. 113 minutes.
Comedy. African-American Directors. Directed by Sidney Poitier.

Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby followed their immensely successful pairing in the comic Uptown Saturday Night with this equally popular working class comedy about the efforts of the two buddies to raise money for their lodge by wagering on a skinny, awkward boxer [played hilariously by Jimmy Walker] they've hypnotized. Cosby is cool as cucumber playing his role, but Poitier, who was the driving creative force behind the making of the series of film [the last in the cycle was A Piece of the Action] is less than comfortable as a lower middle class clown. With: Calvin Lockhart, Ossie Davis, Jimmie Walker, Denise Nicholas, Lee Chamberlin, Mel Stewart, Julius Harris, Paul E. Harris, Val Avery, Talya Ferro, Morgan Roberts, Doug Johnson, Richard Young, and Billy Eckstine.
Notes: Music lyrics composed and produced by Curtis Mayfield and performed by the Staple Singers. Photography by Donald M. Morgan. Screenplay by Richard Wesley from a story by Timothy March.


LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL see MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL.


LILIES OF THE FIELD.
1963. 94 minutes. (V370).
Drama. Directed by Ralph Nelson.

Sidney Poitier won an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in this charming, good natured film about a young black craftsman experiences helping some Swiss nuns build a chapel in the Arizona desert. Poitier, the one very visible black star actor in movies through most of the '50s and early '60s won more than an Oscar on the night in April 1964With: Lilia Skala (best supporting actress Oscar), Stanley Adams, Lisa Mann, and Isa Krino.
Notes: Based on a novel by William E. Barrett. Oscar nominations for best picture, screenplay (James A. Poe), and cinematography (b/w Ernest Haller).


THE LONG WALK HOME.
1990. 98 minutes. (V3040).
Drama -- Racism -- Boycott, Birmingham, Alabama 1955. Directed by Richard Pearce.

In Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, the start of a bus boycott by the black citizens of the city is also an emotionally charged moment in the lives of a housekeeper named Odessa Cotter and her white employers, especially her boss' wife, Miriam Thompson. The events of the strike and the tense atmosphere creates a deeply disturbing environment for both women, an environment that in the end proves very cathartic. Sissy Spacek and Whoopi Goldberg give fine, restrained performances as two proud, intelligent and strong women caught up by the emotions and pressures of the time and place. The Long Walk Home is fine traditional film making -- a solid story, good acting, clean unobtrusive direction. There are some heart felt moments in the film, but the film does not exploit the past or the violence as gratuitously as Mississippi Burning did. That may explain why it came and went so quietly in the theaters. With: Dwight Schultz, Ving Rhames, Dylan Baker, Erika Alexander, Lexi Randall, Richard Halbersham, Jason Weaver, and Chelcie Ross.
Notes: Photographed by Roger Deakins. Music by George Fenton. Written by John Cork. Executive Producers Taylor Hackford and Stuart Benjamin. The narration is the voice of Mary Steenburgen.


LOOKING FOR LANGSTON.
1989. 45 minutes.
African-American Cinema. Queer Cinema. Langston Hughes, Interpretation. Homosexuality. African-American Directors. Directed by Isaac Julien.

This impressionistic film is a evocation of the sexual and sensual qualities in the life and work of Langston Hughes. Julien uses archival, newsreel, television and film footage of Hughes and other black artists in Harlem that dramatically contrasts with his staged scenes of black men engaged in romantic, sexual, and other Homo-erotic images. Julien's style and sensibilities are strikingly similar to those of the late Derek Jarman, whose themes were not dissimilar. On the other hand, the images are the same kind of black and white imagery used by Bruce Weber in his ads for Calvin Klein and MTV film [most notably Madonna's Vogue].
Notes: Poetry and Texts by James Baldwin [from The Price of the Ticket]. Essex Hemphill [including Where the Seed Falls, Under Certain Circumstances, le Salon, The Edge, third movement, and The Brass Rail], Bruce Nugent [Smoke, Lilies and Jade from Fire, 1926], Hilton Als [Introduction of Negro Faggotry in the Harlem Renaissance]. Cast includes: Ben Ellison as Alex, Matthew Baidoo as Beauty, Akim Mogaji as James, John Wilson as Karl, Dencil Williams as Marcus, Guy Burgess as Dean, James Dublin as Carlos, and Harry Donaldson as the Leatherboy. Notes: Photographed by Nina Kellgren. Edited by Robert Hargreaves. Produced by Nadine Marsh-Edwards. Written by Julien.


LORRAINE HANSBERRY: THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN THE CREATION OF DRAMA.
1976. 35 minutes. (V652).
Directed by Ralph Tangney.

The life and work of America's leading black woman playwright, showing her importance as a woman, a playwright, and as a black. The film traces her artistic growth and the development of her unique vision. Included are excerpts from her major works. With: Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Roy Scheider, Al Freeman, Jr.
Notes: Narrated by Claudia McNeil. Executive Producer, Harold Mantell. Produced by Tangney in association with Harold Nemiroff.


LOSING ISIAH.
1995. 106 minutes.
Drama. Adoption. Hyperactive Children. Adoption of Black Children by White Parents. Directed by Stephen Gyllehaal.

Jessica Lange is Margaret Lewin a white woman who adopts the child abandoned by a drug addict. The child, autistic, and hyperactive, is a challenge to her husband and daughter -- the family must fight through enormous difficulties to fully accept the child but Margaret's will is strongest. When Khaila Richards, the child's real mother suddenly reappears and demands that the courts return the child to her, Margaret Lewins puts up a valiant fight to keep the child. Another impressive, emotionally rich role for Lange. Halle Berry as Khaila Richards gives a very strong performance and the rest of the cast is quite capable. With: David Strathairn as Charles Lewin, Cuba Gooding as Eddie Hughes, Daisy Eagan as Hannah Lewin, Marc John Jefferies as Isaiah, Samuel L. Jackson as Katon Lewis, Joie Susannah Lee as Marie and Regina Taylor as Gussie.
Notes: Screenplay by Naomi Foner from the novel by Seth Margolis. Produced by Howard W. Koch, Jr. and Naomi Foner. Box-office gross: $7,603,766.


LOUIE BLUIE.
1985. 60 minutes. (V2760).
Documentary. Blues musicians. Directed by Terry Zwigoff.

"Howard 'Louie Bluie' Armstrong is a musician and artists as well as one of the last of the old time 'lust' storytellers. With his authentic music and his colorful stories, drawings and poems, Louie Bluie tells us about many contradictory worlds: black and white, country and city, native and ethnic, yesterday and today. Louie Bluie is a delightful and thoroughly entertaining combination of interviews, comments and red-hot performances, skillfully arranged to form a spirited, joyous character study of Howard 'Louie Bluie' Armstrong."
Notes: Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photographed by John Knoop and Chris Li. Edited by Victoria Lewis.


LUCILLE CLIFTON.
1989. 60 minutes.
Poets. Poetry Readings. African-American Poets. Black Women Poets. Produced and directed by Lewis Mac Adams and John Dorr.

Two time Pulitzer Prize nominee Clifton reads from her poetry at the Los Angeles Theatre Center and is interviewed by Mac Adams (June 7, 1988). Clifton reads "Homage to My Hips," "Wishes for Sons" "What the Mirror Said," "Poem to My Uterus," "To My Last Period," "Sleeping Beauty," "Quilting," "Eyes," "The Death of Crazy Horse," "The Message of Crazy Horse," "The Message of Thelma Sales," "The Death of Joanne C.," "Leukemia as White Rabbit," "Incantation," "Chemotherapy," "Leukemia as Dream Ritual," "The Message of J.," "The Death of Fred Clifton," "The Message of Fred Clifton," "Sorrow Song," and "Shapeshifter Poems." She tells how she became a poet, discusses her identities as a woman and as an American, and talks about her inspirations. She also comments on her family and her book Generations. Produced by Metropolitan Pictures in association with the Lannan Foundation.


LUMUMBA:DEATH OF A PROPHET.
1992. 70 minutes. In French with English subtitles.
Documentary. Patrice Lumumba. Congo--History. Africa--Politics and Government. [France, Germany, Switzerland]. Directed by Raoul Peck.

An impressionistic documentary about the role of Patrice Lumumba in the emerging independence movements in 1960s post-colonial Africa. Idealistic and passionate, Lumumba, almost immediately after the ceding of the Belgian Congo by the government of Belgium, became viewed as a dangerous man, possibly a tool of the communist. After the Congo became a free state he was already at odds with the young Army Colonel who would become the true master of what would become Zaire, Joseph Mobutu and tribal rival Moishe Tshombe. It would end tragically for Lumumba, who would die in 1961 at the age of 36. Among those interviewed: Louis Willems [journalist], Jacques Brassinne [Belgian ambassador to Leopoldville, 1960], Pierre Davos [reporter], Jean van Lierde [friend of Lumumba and pacifist], Francois Vanderstraeten [Major in the Force Publique, 1960], Julianna Lumumba [daughter], Anicet Kashamura [Lumumba's Information Minister, 1960], Jean Kestergat [journalist], and Serge Michel [journalist].
Notes: Written by Peck. Photography by Matthias Kalin, Milivj Ivkovic [scenes in Brussels] and Philippe Ros , Valerie Laoinie [interviews].


LYING LIPS.
1939. 60 minutes.
Melodrama. Courtroom drama. African-American Cinema. Oscar Micheaux. Directed by Oscar Micheaux.

Elsie Bellwood is a chanteuse in a Harlem night club, popular with gangsters from downtown. When Benjamin Hadnott, the club's manager, who respects Elsie as a talent and not a "casual" lady of the club fails to entice Elsie into offering after hours entertainment to the gangsters, he's fired. Elsie, concerned over Benjamin's loss of a job, thinks of supporting him. Before she can make the offer, she is accused of murdering her aunt for insurance money. Carmen, who has become a police detective, joins forces with another officer to find the real killers. This is one of Oscar's Micheaux's race pictures from the '30s. It is a very uneven work, with some fairly amateurish acting and the script, written by Micheaux is dreadful. The film is however, typical of the genre with plots centering around melodrama in the cafe and nightclub life. Micheaux's screenplay is filled with uplifting if somewhat artificial dialogue generally delivered badly. The cast none-the-less is very interesting. Edna Mae Harris who plays Elsie Bellwood is a buxom singer with a pleasing voice but not much acting skill. Carmen Newsome as Benjamin Hadnott is very stiff as the faithful hero. Earl Jones as Detective Wanzer is the father of James Earl Jones and one detects the fine baritone voice in the father. The most assured and professional acting is done by Juano Hernandez in the small role of Reverend Bryson. Hernandez's great work, especially in Intruder in the Dust, would come much later. With: Frances Williams as Elizabeth Green, Cherokee Thornton as John, Slim Thompson as Clyde, Gladys Williams as Aunt Josephine, and Amanda Randolph as Matron (who would gain more notice as the meddlesome mother-in-law in the controversial and popular Amos and Andy TV series of the early 1950s).
Notes: Written by Micheaux. Photographed by Lester Lane. Edited by Nelson Mannerly. Musical Direction by Jack Shilkret. Dialogue direction by John Kollum. Some women may take mild offense at the role Micheaux seems to think black women should have in relationship their men -- what the heroine spouts as devotion to her man may be less appealing than the toughness of the conniving villainess. Oscar Micheaux's silent films have a greater power than his later, under-financed sound films. The cant and silliness of the spoken dialogue in this film is not apparent in films like in his silent Body and Soul.

A LYNCHING IN MARION.
1995. 30 minutes.
Documentary. Lynching, Marion Indiana. August 7, 1930.

"In August, 1930, a 16 year-old African-American named James Cameron survived a lynching. Now, 65 years later, Cameron tells his compelling story in vivid detail. On a hot summer evening in Marion, Indiana, Cameron and two friends robed a white couple. News of real and alleged crimes spread. Cameron's two friends were hanged. Just after the rope had been placed around his neck, his life was spared and he was taken to a prison outside of Marion for safety."
Notes: Produced by JoAnne Garrett. Videographer/Editor, Everett Soetenga. Original Music, Brad Wray. Directed by Nolan Lehman. Researcher, Michelle Doniger.