Directed by Raoul Peck • Drama • With Eriq Ebouaney • 2001 • 115 minutes
Made in the tradition of such true-life political thrillers as Malcolm X and JFK, Raoul Peck's award-winning Lumumba is a gripping epic that dramatizes for the first time the rise and fall of legendary African leader Patrice Lumumba. When the Congo declared its independence from Belgium in 1960, the 36-year-old, self-educated Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the newly independent state. Called "the politico of the bush" by journalists of the day, he became a lightning rod of Cold War politics as his vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies in Belgium and the U.S. Lumumba would last just months in office before being brutally assassinated. Strikingly photographed in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Belgium as civil war once again raged in the Congo, the film vividly re-creates the shocking events behind the birth of the country that became Zaire during the reign of Lumumba's former friend and eventual nemesis, Joseph Mobutu.
Directed by Charles Burnett • Drama • With Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett, Ronnie Bell • 1983 • 86 minutes
In 1983, after many long months of shooting, Charles Burnett sent his rough-cut of My Brother’s Wedding to his producers. Ignoring his request to finish the editing of t...
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot • Documentary • With Pablo Picasso,
Henri-Georges Clouzot • 1956 • 78 minutes
Pablo Picasso, the most influential artist of the twentieth century, is making a painting, just as French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear and Diabolique) is making...
Directed by George Nierenberg • Documentary • With Lionel Hampton, Bunny Briggs, Chuck Green, Howard "Sandman" Sims • 1979 • 59 minutes
The golden age of tap dancing spanned the first half of the twentieth century, but by the 1950s, the form fell to the likes of rock 'n' roll and modern dance. I...
