African American Cinema on VHS
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The Color Purple (Widescreen Edition)
List Price: $8.98 Now Only: $2.00 You Save: $ 6.98 (78%)
Category: VHS Movies
 Publisher: Warner Home Video Starring: Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Margaret Avery, Willard E. Pugh Directed By: Steven Spielberg Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Steven Spielberg, proving he's one of the few modern filmmakers who has the visual fluency to be capable of making a great silent film, took a melodramatic, D.W. Griffith-inspired approach to filming Alice Walker's novel. His tactics made the film controversial, but also a popular hit. You can argue with the appropriateness of Spielberg's decision, but his astonishing facility with images is undeniable--from the exhilarating and eye-popping opening shots of children playing in paradisiacal purple fields to the way he conveys the brutality of a rape by showing hanging leather belts banging against the head of the shaking bed. |
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4 Little Girls
List Price: $14.98 Now Only: $7.95 You Save: $ 7.03 (47%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Hbo Home Video Starring: Dianne Braddock, Carolyn Lee Brown, Gerald Colbert, Arthur Hanes Jr., Freeman Hrabowski III Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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There are many remarkable things about the documentary 4 Little Girls. Spike Lee's striking, beautifully realized film is a cinematic lesson of what kind of material is better suited to the documentary format. In his first documentary, Lee shares an attribute of Ken Burns: the major event in his documentary is not seen on camera. Except for four quick glimpses of black-and-white autopsy photos, the picture stays clear from the bombing. |
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Set It Off
List Price: $6.98 Now Only: $1.75 You Save: $ 5.23 (75%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: New Line Home Video Starring: Van Baum, Vincent Baum, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Natalie Desselle, Dr. Dre Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Even when it misses a dramatic opportunity in favor of generic action, Set It Off benefits from a sharp understanding of its well-drawn central characters. They're a quartet of young African American women in Los Angeles (Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise), all struggling against a system that seems designed to prevent them from realizing their dreams. The movie establishes their plight with credible attention to emotional detail, making their decision to rob banks believable enough to give the ensuing plot its inevitably tragic momentum. |
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Toni Morrison: Profile of a Writer
Price: $25.00
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Homevision Starring: Toni Morrison Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison is one of the leading novelists in the United States. Her work--from The Bluest Eye to Song of Solomon to Jazz--is noted for its vivid imagery and powerful subjects. Her best-known work, though, is Beloved, which was made into a feature film directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah Winfrey. Beloved is the stark tale of a mother who makes a terrible decision rather than see her baby daughter suffer through slavery. |
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Baps
Price: $6.99
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: New Line Home Video Starring: Halle Berry, Natalie Desselle, Martin Landau, Ian Richardson, Troy Beyer Directed By: Robert Townsend Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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What was director Robert Townsend thinking? His movies, such as The Five Heartbeats and The Hollywood Shuffle, are sweet, enjoyable little pictures. But this "comedy" about two flashy Georgia women hoping to find money and men in Los Angeles is stereotypical, unfunny, embarrassing, and boring. Halle Berry and newcomer Natalie Desselle are trapped in pitiful roles playing against the distinguished but miscast Martin Landau and a wasted Ian Richardson. B.A.P.S., by the way, stands for black American princesses. |
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Black Eye
Price: $24.99
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Warner Home Video Starring: Fred Williamson, Rosemary Forsyth, Teresa Graves, Floy Dean, Richard Anderson Directed By: Jack Arnold Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Action-mystery involving a black private detective who investigates murders connected with a drug ring in Venice, CA.. |
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Martin Luther King, Jr. - I Have a Dream
Price: $40.00
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Mpi Home Video Starring: Martin Luther Jr. King Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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One of the greatest and most memorable moments in the civil rights movement occurred when 200,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Not only was the gathering of so many united people extraordinary, but that day Martin Luther King Jr. stood before the marchers and delivered his most eloquent and inspiring speech. This video offers the "I Have a Dream" speech in its entirety, as well as footage of the opposition the protesters faced, such as the fire hoses the police in Alabama used to disperse the crowds. |
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Jungle Fever
List Price: $9.98 Now Only: $1.95 You Save: $ 8.03 (80%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: MCA/Universal Home Video Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Spike Lee's 1991 story about an interracial relationship and its consequences on the lives and communities of the lovers (Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra) is one of his most captivating and focused films. Snipes and Sciorra are very good as individuals trying to reach beyond the limits imposed upon them for reasons of race, tradition, sexism, and such. Lee makes an interesting and subtle case that they are driven to one another out of frustration with social obstacles as well as pure attraction--but is that enough for love to survive? John Turturro is featured in a subplot as an Italian American who grows attracted to a black woman and takes heat from his numbskull buddies. --Tom Keogh. |
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Higher Learning
List Price: $9.95 Now Only: $3.90 You Save: $ 6.05 (61%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Sony Pictures Starring: Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Michael Rapaport, Jennifer Connelly, Ice Cube Directed By: John Singleton Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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This ambitious 1995 film by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) doesn't quite succeed at painting the illuminating, collective portrait of college life in the '90s that the director seeks. But Singleton does do a fine job of defining some conflicting impulses for young people on the cusp of adulthood, particularly the desire to broaden horizons on the one hand and circle the wagons with like-minded allies on the other. Students in the film's Columbus University divide themselves along lines of race, sexual preferences, ideology, and, most dangerously, levels of paranoia. Among the fine cast is Michael Rapaport, who portrays a loner drawn to a local community of neo-Nazis. |
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Eyes on the Prize: Awakenings (1954 - 1956)
Price: $52.99
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Pbs Home Video Starring: Julian Bond, James Bevel, Myrlie Evers, James Farmer, James Forman Directed By: Henry Hampton Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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This ambitious 1995 film by John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood) doesn't quite succeed at painting the illuminating, collective portrait of college life in the '90s that the director seeks. But Singleton does do a fine job of defining some conflicting impulses for young people on the cusp of adulthood, particularly the desire to broaden horizons on the one hand and circle the wagons with like-minded allies on the other. Students in the film's Columbus University divide themselves along lines of race, sexual preferences, ideology, and, most dangerously, levels of paranoia. Among the fine cast is Michael Rapaport, who portrays a loner drawn to a local community of neo-Nazis. |
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