Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley’s documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine follows James Baldwin on a journey across America as he recounts his experiences of the civil rights movement. He travels to Birmingham, where white supremacists exploded or planted roughly 50 bombs during the 1950s and ’60s, and to Selma, where Martin Luther King Jr. led the march to Montgomery in 1965, painting a vivid picture of life in the South as it violently resisted desegregation. Then Baldwin journeys back up North to Newark, where riots raged for days after a Black man was assaulted by the police. At each stop, Baldwin is left to reflect on how much things have changed and how much they have stayed the same.
More than 40 years after its original release, the documentary benefits from a special effect that hasn’t lost an ounce of power or authenticity in the intervening decades: Baldwin himself.
More than 40 years after its original release, the documentary benefits from a special effect that hasn’t lost an ounce of power or authenticity in the intervening decades: Baldwin himself.
- 1/10/2024
- by Ross McIndoe
- Slant Magazine
Ronnie Lee refused to eat pork. “Swine,” he said, “was unclean.”
My oldest cousin was never particularly religious. In fact, the only time I ever recall Ronnie Lee in the pews of a church was for various family funerals and weddings, where he often came dressed to the nines with high-shined Stacy Adams and silk-brimmed, fedora hat festooned with a peacock feather like he was headed to a Player’s Club ball. Once, days after somebody plastered his backside with a hail of buckshots in a botched robbery, he came...
My oldest cousin was never particularly religious. In fact, the only time I ever recall Ronnie Lee in the pews of a church was for various family funerals and weddings, where he often came dressed to the nines with high-shined Stacy Adams and silk-brimmed, fedora hat festooned with a peacock feather like he was headed to a Player’s Club ball. Once, days after somebody plastered his backside with a hail of buckshots in a botched robbery, he came...
- 11/6/2022
- by Goldie Taylor
- Rollingstone.com
Ronnie Lee refused to eat pork. “Swine,” he said, “was unclean.”
My oldest cousin was never particularly religious. In fact, the only time I ever recall Ronnie Lee in the pews of a church was for various family funerals and weddings, where he often came dressed to the nines with high-shined Stacy Adams and silk-brimmed, fedora hat festooned with a peacock feather like he was headed to a Player’s Club ball. Once, days after somebody plastered his backside with a hail of buckshots in a botched robbery, he came...
My oldest cousin was never particularly religious. In fact, the only time I ever recall Ronnie Lee in the pews of a church was for various family funerals and weddings, where he often came dressed to the nines with high-shined Stacy Adams and silk-brimmed, fedora hat festooned with a peacock feather like he was headed to a Player’s Club ball. Once, days after somebody plastered his backside with a hail of buckshots in a botched robbery, he came...
- 11/6/2022
- by Goldie Taylor
- Rollingstone.com
This commentary on the life and legacy of Sidney Poitier was first published in the 2006 BAFTA/LA Cunard Britannia Awards, as part of the organization’s lifetime achievement award tribute to the trailblazing star, who died Jan. 6 at the age of 94.
Is Sidney Poitier the most important actor in American history?
One could quickly defend that question affirmatively simply with a newsreel of clips showing heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., from Birmingham to the March on Washington, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks; Olympians Tommy Smith and John Carlos with their fists in the 1968 Mexico City air; rabid segregationists Bull Connor, Lester Maddox and George Wallace; the sit-ins and the accompanying firehoses and attacking police dogs; the segregated public spaces, the high-profile Ku Klux Klan marches and their low-profile lynchings.
To any American film fan who lived through the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s,...
Is Sidney Poitier the most important actor in American history?
One could quickly defend that question affirmatively simply with a newsreel of clips showing heroes like Martin Luther King Jr., from Birmingham to the March on Washington, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks; Olympians Tommy Smith and John Carlos with their fists in the 1968 Mexico City air; rabid segregationists Bull Connor, Lester Maddox and George Wallace; the sit-ins and the accompanying firehoses and attacking police dogs; the segregated public spaces, the high-profile Ku Klux Klan marches and their low-profile lynchings.
To any American film fan who lived through the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and ’60s,...
- 1/9/2022
- by Steven Gaydos
- Variety Film + TV
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