Tag: Film
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Harlem in Film
These were independent films that were shot almost entirely on studio stages, (virtually no on-the-streets cinematography). Still, these two films remain important documents of how Harlem and Black life in Harlem was envisioned and represented by a Black director – Oscar Micheaux. This is the double feature DVD: You can learn more about Oscar Micheaux…
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Neptune Frost – Catch the Harlem Premiere
Dedza Films and Kino Lorber have just released our latest title NEPTUNE FROST, which tells the story of a cosmic romance between an intersex hacker and a coltan miner that seeds revolution. Written and directed by multidisciplinary artists Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, the sci-fi musical features original music by Williams tackling war, identity, and…
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Redlining and Affordable Housing
Decades of disinvestment, planned neglect, and overtly biased policies followed the devastation caused by redlining. The 1938 map below of northern Manhattan shows how our community was redlined: The on-the-ground consequence of both redlining and its aftermath is seen in short film, shot from a car in the 1980’s. It has taken decades of public…
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A Modest Proposal: Density
Gotham Gazette has a well thought out essay on how density should be a planning goal for our community in light of the 2nd Avenue Subway extension: High-quality planning and significant upzoning could boost ridership on the new line and remake East Harlem into a place that more comfortably accommodates current and future residents–of all…
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Bitter Root Coming to the Big Screen
For those of us who are graphic novel/comic fans, it was exciting to hear that Regina King is going to directing an adaptation of David F. Walker, Sanford Green, and Chuck Brown’s Harlem Renaissance-set comic book Bitter Root for Legendary Pictures. Set in the ‘20s, the book is about a family of monster hunters called the Sangeryes…
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Drugs and Children
I Walk on Water Filmmaker Khalik Allah has a new film – IWOW: I Walk On Water – coming in at a massive 200 minutes. As with earlier work, Allah returns to Lex/125 and films a hallucinatory portrait of the men and women of the M35, K2, mental illness, and homelessness: Since 2011, filmmaker and…
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March 9th, HNBA Meeting
Mark your calendars. On Tuesday, March 9th we’ll have 3 amazing presentations. 7:00 PM – We will have a Q+A with Kristin R. Jordan, who is a candidate for Council District 9 – kristinforharlem@gmail.com. In addition to giving us a sense of who she is and what her key platforms are, Kristin will address the…
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James E. Hinton – Recording Black Activism
The New Yorker has an amazing video of work by the photographer James E. Hinton who made his name memorializing some of the most prominent figures of the civil-rights era. Hinton photographed not only Black leaders of the time (athletes, artists, politicians, thinkers, musicians – including Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali, Mahalia…
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Chester Himes
After reading a collection of Chester Himes’ short stories and having previously read most of his novels, I was intrigued to watch the film Come Back Charleston Blue. Come Back, Charleston Blue is a 1972 comedy film starring Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques, and is based on Chester Himes’ novel The Heat’s On. It…
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The Silent March
In the 1970’s a back-hoe operator noticed scores and scores of film canisters and reels poking out of the soil where he was digging a new septic system: The wet, dirty, and frozen film reels represented a trove of silent era films that the world had not seen for generations. Dawson City in Canada’s far…
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The Godfather of Harlem
I confess I’ve never watched The Godfather of Harlem but I’ve been so taken by this dual versions of their ad: And, when Park Avenue was pretty empty on a weekend morning I thought I’d capture the two images.
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400 Miles to Freedom
If you’ve ever been curious about internal race relations within the Jewish community (in Israel and here in in the US), 400 Miles to Freedom is a great introduction. I’m including it here because of some wonderful shots of our neighborhood in the film: In 1984, the Beta Israel, a secluded 2,500-year-old community of observant…
