DVD releases
Baadasssss!
Mario Van Peebles' Baadasssss! is a richly entertaining and affectionate depiction of his father Melvin Van Peebles' making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the legendary 1971 hit which featured the first black ghetto hero in screen history.
Borderline
A groundbreaking silent film for its explicit theme of racial prejudice and with an implicit homoerotic subtext, Borderline (1930) is a seething exploration of love, passion and betrayal.
Burning an Illusion
A love story that traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher's London, Menelik Shabazz's debut feature was a coming-of-age for black British cinema.
Carmen Jones
In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein II adapted the opera Carmen as a Broadway musical. Setting it in the contemporary southern states of the USA, with an all-black cast, it ran for over five hundred performances. The cast is led by Dorothy Dandridge, whose vibrant performance resulted in the first Oscar nomination for a black actress.
Looking for Langston
Isaac Julien's lyrical and poetic consideration of the life of the revered Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes
The Night of Truth
Set in an unnamed African country, after ten years of bloody war, The Night of Truth dramatises the process of truth and reconciliation, echoing the recent histories of South Africa, Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
Pressure and Baldwin's Nigger
Horace Ové's landmark films Pressure (1975), a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths; and Baldwin's Nigger (1969), a striking portrait of the writer James Baldwin at his sharp-witted best.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
Conceived and directed by its star Melvin Van Peebles, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) is a controversial and landmark classic of Black Cinema and independent film-making. It was the highest grossing indie of 1971 (out performing Love Story) and is justly credited with kick-starting the Blaxploitation genre.
To Sleep with Anger
Charles Burnett, wrote and directed this domestic drama about a black middle-class family living in South Central Los Angeles. To Sleep with Anger is a brew of mysticism and melodrama, about ordinary people who find a monster in their midst.
