2001 VIDEO CATALOG - Clinton Essex Franklin Library System

In In In a a Jazz Jazz Way: Way: A A A Portrait Portrait Portrait of of Mura Mura Dehn
Dehn
In the 1930's the magic and energy of jazz dancing drew many to Harlem's Savoy Ballroom. Among them
was Mura Dehn, a young Russian dancer. Today at 82, a still vital Mura Dehn tells us about those
halcyon days.
30 min. color
In In In and and Out Out of of Time
Time
The filmmaker's grandmother is losing her memory due to Alzheimer's disease. This film documents the
changes in the grandmother, and offers encouraging education in adapting to the effects of the disease.
Topics for discussion include: family relations, caregiving, mental health and aging.
14 min. color pp
In In Black Black & & & White White #1: #1: Charles Charles Johnson
Johnson
Johnson describes his over-arching literary objective: to explore classical, metaphysical questions from
East and West against the backdrop of African American life and history. His 1990 National Book Award
winner Middle Passage, a sea saga about an educated free slave who signs on board a slave ship,
becomes a search for individual identity among conflicting European and African cultures.
27 min. color pp
In In Black Black & & White White #2: #2: Gloria Gloria Naylor
Naylor
Gloria naylor is one of the most acute observers of contemporary African American life. Readings from
her various works reveal the breadth of her vision - from the rural South to the urban ghetto to the black
middle class. In this video, Naylor discusses the value and difficulty of maintaining an African American
identity in a world dominated by whites.
21 min. color pp
In In Black Black & & White White #3: #3: Toni Toni Toni Morrison
Morrison
Toni Morrison has been called "a literary Moses stripping away the idols of whiteness and blackness that
have prevented blacks from knowing themselves." Readings from her Pulitzer Prize winning novel
Beloved and other works show how Morrison returns to the pain of slavery and segregation to restore
wholeness to the black psyche.
25 min. color pp
In In In Black Black & & & White White #4: #4: Alice Alice Walker
Walker
Alice Walker shares her remarkable spiritual jouney from a sharecropping childhood in rural Georgia to
the peace and creativity of her present retreat in Northern California. She reads from her poetry and
discusses contemporary America with an anger and urgency rooted in an abiding optimism.
30 min. color pp
In In In Black Black & & White White #5: #5: August August Wilson
Wilson
Interviewed on the set of his latest play Two Trains Running this conversation introduces one of
America's most celebrated playwrights, August Wilson. Wilson traces the origins of his plays back to a
troubled childhood in a Pittsburgh ghetto. He explains the influence of black traditions like storytelling
and the blues on his work, and describes his role as passing down the practical and spiritual wisdom of
the African American community.
22 min. color pp
In In In Black Black & & White White #6: #6: John John John Wideman
Wideman
John Wideman's trilogy Sent for You Yesterday, Damballah and Hiding Place has turned Homewood, the
Pittsburgh ghetto where he was raised into a mythic place in the American literary imagination. In books
like Philadelphia Fire, the account of an infamous police action which burned an entire black
neighborhood, or Brothers and Keepers, his memoir of his brother now serving a life term for murder,
Wideman has given voice to people not usually heard in American literature.
26 min. color pp
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