A Century of Black Cinema (1997)

A general survey of the black presence in American film from the birth of the movies to the mid 1990's. All the obvious highlights are touched on, Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, Carman Jones, Guess Whose Coming to Dinner, Shaft, The Whiz, The Color Purple, etc. A good primer that may introduce the viewer to some good films that otherwise might be lost in obscurity (like Paul Robeson's Song of Freedom from 1937). Speaking of Robeson, he and other forgotten black performers like him are another reason to see the film, they were pioneers and often quite talented, like Fredi Washington in the original 1934 version of Imitation of Life, or Roscoe Lee Brown whose maybe 10 minutes of screen time in Hitchcock's 1968 film Topaz constitute that movies high point (ironically these two personalities are not really featured in the doc, but others like them are). I would still like to see more of Pam Greer. 3 out of 5.