African American Cinema on VHS
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To Sir, with Love
Price: $29.94
Category: VHS Movies
 Publisher: RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video Starring: Sidney Poitier, Christian Roberts, Judy Geeson, Suzy Kendall, Lulu Directed By: James Clavell Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. |
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Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
Price: $79.62
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Live / Artisan Starring: Claudia McNeil, Janet MacLachlan, Robert Christian, Larry B. Scott, Roy Poole Directed By: Jack Smight Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. |
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Low Down Dirty Shame
List Price: $9.99 Now Only: $3.48 You Save: $ 6.51 (65%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Walt Disney Video Starring: Michael Bofshever, John Capodice, Gary Cervantes, Devin DeVasquez, Don Diamont Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. |
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My Sweet Charlie
Price: Check for Updated Price
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Universal Studios Starring: Patty Duke, Al Freeman Jr., Ford Rainey, William Hardy (III), Chris Wilson (III) Directed By: Lamont Johnson Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Novelist James Clavell wrote, produced, and directed this 1967 British film (based on a novel by E.R. Braithwaite) about a rookie teacher who throws out stock lesson plans and really takes command of his unruly, adolescent students in a London school. Poitier is very good as a man struggling with the extent of his commitment to the job, and even more as a teacher whose commitment is to proffering life lessons instead of academics. The spirit of this movie can be found in such recent films as Dangerous Minds and Mr. |
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A Raisin in the Sun
Price: $6.61
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Columbia Pictures Starring: Diana Sands, Louis Gossett Jr. Directed By: Daniel Petrie Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Lorraine Hansberry's play is given sensitive treatment by filmmaker Daniel Petrie (The Bay Boy). Sidney Poitier heads a fine cast in the story of an African American family in Chicago who are struggling with mixed aspirations, not enough money, conflicts over religion, and institutional racism. The film is pretty much set-bound (as plays adapted for the screen sometimes are), but the drama is intense and moving. --Tom Keogh. |
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Roots 6 Video Box Set
List Price: $54.98 Now Only: $37.49 You Save: $ 17.49 (32%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Warner Home Video Starring: Maya Angelou, Ji-Tu Cumbuka, Moses Gunn, Thalmus Rasulala, Hari Rhodes Directed By: Marvin J. Chomsky, David Greene, Gilbert Moses Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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From the moment the young Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton) is stolen from his life and ancestral home in 18th-century Africa and brought under inhumane conditions to be auctioned as a slave in America, a line is begun that leads from this most shameful chapter in U.S. history to the 20th-century author Alex Haley, a Kinte descendant. The late Haley's acclaimed book Roots was adapted into this six-volume television miniseries, which was a widely watched phenomenon in 1977. The programs cover several generations in the antebellum South and end with the story of "Chicken" George, a freed slave played by Ben Vereen whose family feels the agony of entrenched racism and learns to fight it. |
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Amistad (Thx)
List Price: $9.99 Now Only: $0.99 You Save: $ 9.00 (90%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Dreamworks Video Starring: Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne, Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey Directed By: Steven Spielberg Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitized history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut-and-dry genre piece. |
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The Piano Lesson (1995)
Price: $15.90
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Hallmark Starring: Charles S. Dutton, Alfre Woodard, Carl Gordon, Tommy Hollis, Lou Myers Directed By: Lloyd Richards (II) Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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The only one of August Wilson's plays to be filmed (and for television, at that), this 1990 Pulitzer Prize-winner is an amazing piece of work. Adapted by Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards, who staged it on Broadway, the play deals not just with racism and its effects but with the ongoing legacy and curse of slavery on modern blacks. Set in 1920s Pittsburgh, the story deals with the arrival of Boy Willie (Charles Dutton) from Mississippi, to claim a family heirloom from his sister Berniece (Alfre Woodard): the piano, carved by their ancestors with symbols of slavery. He wants to sell it to buy the land his grandfather worked as a slave; Berniece refuses to give it up because it represents a horrifying episode from the family's past. |
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Glory
List Price: $14.95 Now Only: $6.50 You Save: $ 8.45 (57%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Sony Pictures Starring: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman, Jihmi Kennedy Directed By: Edward Zwick Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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One of the very best films about the Civil War, this instant classic from 1989 is also one of the few films to depict the participation of African American soldiers in Civil War combat. Based in part on the books Lay This Laurel by Lincoln Kirstein and One Gallant Rush by Peter Burchard, the film also draws from the letters of Robert Gould Shaw (played by Matthew Broderick), the 25-year-old son of Boston abolitionists who volunteered to command the all-black 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Their training and battle experience leads them to their final assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina, where their heroic bravery turned bitter defeat into a symbolic victory that brought recognition to black soldiers and turned the tide of the war. With painstaking attention to historical detail and richness of character, the film boasts superior performances by Denzel Washington (who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes, and Andre Braugher. |
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Jazz - A Film by Ken Burns
List Price: $149.88 Now Only: $22.00 You Save: $ 127.88 (85%)
Category: VHS Movies
Publisher: Pbs Home Video Starring: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles J. Correll, Freeman F. Gosden, Edward R. Murrow, Richard Nixon Prices subject to change. Please verify pricing during checkout. |
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Accompanied by a menagerie of products, Ken Burns's expansive 10-episode paean, Jazz, completes his trilogy on American culture, following The Civil War and Baseball. Spanning more than 19 hours, Jazz is, of course, about a lot more than what many have called America's classical music--especially in episodes 1 through 7. It's here that Burns unearths precious visual images of jazz musicians and hangs historical narratives around the music with convincing authority. Time can stand still as images float past to the sound of grainy vintage jazz, and the drama of a phonograph needle being placed on Louis Armstrong's celestial "West End Blues" is nearly sublime. |
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