Story:A strange singer with God-given talent drifts through his adopted city of Memphis with its canopy of ancient oak trees, streets of shattered windows, and aura of burning spirituality. Surrounded by beautiful women, legendary musicians, a stone-cold hustler, a righteous preacher, and a wolf pack of kids, the sweet, yet unstable, performer avoids the recording studio, driven by his own form of self-discovery. His journey quickly drags him from love and happiness right to the edge of another dimension.
Details: According to Matt Zoller Seitz of Rogerebert.com, Memphis is a quasi-documentary drama about the creative struggles of Memphis blues musician and poet Willis Earl Beal, who’s playing a version of himself here. Beal is a superficially compelling character, in his passive and medicated way. He seems to be blocked. His label wants him to finish his new album but he seems to have fallen down a sort of tinkering spiral, endlessly reworking his work. Is he a perfectionist, or is he procrastinating? When his bandmates press him for more specific directions and grow irritated by his vagueness, are we seeing a misunderstood genius struggle to make himself understood by lesser talents, or a man whose gifts don’t really match his mystique? Read the full review here: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/memphis-2014
Source(s): IMDB, rogerebert.com.
Release Date: 2/7/15 (TV One) Genre: Drama Rating: NR Running Time:Unknown Studio: White Water Productions, Inc. Director: Rusty Cundieff
Cast:Sharon Leal (Annie), Larenz Tate (Terrance), Lori Beth Sikes (Emily), Brody Rose (Tommy), Barry Shabaka Henley (Rev. Stokes), Zhane Hall (Red).
Story: According to Shadow and Act, White Water is the story of a 7 year-old black kid in segregated 1963 Opelika, Alabama who becomes obsessed with the desire to taste the water from the white’s only drinking fountain and sets out on a quest to do the unthinkable: drink from it. Based on a children’s book by Michael S. Bandy and Eric Stein, which was itself based on their childhood experiences. Source(s): Shadow and Act; IMDB.
Release Date: 5/3/19 Genre: Drama/Biography Rating: R Running Time:108 mins. Studio: King Bolden Director:Dan Pritzker
Cast:Gary Carr (Buddy Bolden), Erik LaRay Harvey (Bartley), Yaya DaCosta (Nora Bolden), Reno Wilson (Louis Armstrong), Karimah Westbrook (Alice Bolden), JoNell Kennedy (Ida Bass), Robert Ri’chard (George Baquet), Serena Reeder (Mavis), Michael Rooker (Pat McMurphy), Ian McShane (Judge Perry).
Story: The film is set in 1931 New Orleans, when Buddy Bolden, a long-time asylum inmate, hears the strains of a Louis Armstrong concert drift into his room from the radio in a nearby nurse’s station. The sound evokes memories of his long-forgotten youth as a ground-breaking cornetist, when he played and improvised his way to the forefront of a new musical style, ultimately creating what would evolve decades later into jazz.
Ian McShane will portray Bolden’s nemesis the politician Judge Perry, with Erik LaRay Harvey as Bolden’s manager Bartley, Yaya DaCosta as wife Nora Bolden, Michael Rooker as Perry’s enforcer Pat McMurphy, and Reno Wilson as Louis Armstrong.
Cornet player Charles “Buddy” Bolden was born on September 6, 1877. At the age of 30, he was committed to an asylum where he died in 1931. The only recording he made was never found. He invented Jazz. BOLDEN reimagines the compelling, powerful and tragic journey of an unsung American hero and the social context in which his revolutionary music was conceived. Weaving together fragmented memories of his past, BOLDEN invites you to experience a world fueled by passion, greed and musical genius, in early 1900s New Orleans. Source: Blackfilm.com.
Trailer:
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Details: On November 14, 2014, NOLA.com reported, Bolden, director Dan Pritzker’s long-gestating biopic on jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden — the so-called “first cornet king of New Orleans” — is coming home to the city in which Bolden made his name. After filming in Atlanta and North Carolina, the production is packing its bags for the Crescent City. Pritzker’s self-financed passion project first went before cameras in 2007 and then underwent a first round of reshoots in 2009. This latest round is expected to see Pritzker reshoot approximately half of his film.
Part of the reason for the extensive reshoots is because actor Anthony Mackie, who portrayed Bolden in the first two shoots, was unavailable for this latest round of shooting. He is being replaced in the cast by actor Gary Carr. Other cast members include Ian McShane, who will take over for Jackie Earle Haley in the role of Bolden nemesis Judge Perry; and Nelsan Ellis, who will play Bolden’s band manager. Jazzman Wynton Marsalis composed the film’s score.
The talented but troubled Buddy Bolden is among the more colorful characters in New Orleans’ jazz history. A huge draw in his hometown of New Orleans in the early 1900’s, his “Funky Butt (Buddy Bolden’s Blues)” is among his more celebrated numbers, one widely covered by other musicians. Tragically, Bolden’s career — and his life — was cut short by a struggle with mental illness. By the time he was 30, he was institutionalized at the Louisiana State Insane Asylum, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died at 54 years old of what is described as alcohol-related psychosis and was buried in a pauper’s cemetery in New Orleans.
His musical influence, however, long outlasted him. No known recordings of his work exist, and facts about his life have become intermingled with myth. Still, with his improvisation-heavy blend of ragtime and blues — which he performed with his Bolden Band under the name King Bolden — he is widely recognized as an originator of the musical form that would become jazz.
Source(s): NOLA.com (adapted); Movie Insider; IMDB. Photo Credit: NOLA.com.
Release Date: 1/1/15 Genre: Drama Rating: Unknown Running Time: NR Studio: Greyshack Films Director: Jake Mahaffy
Cast: Kathy Smith (Pearlie), David Harewood (Abe Wilkins), Edwina Findley (Melva Neddy).
Details: “How could a man suffocate a child for two hours, the entire time believing he was helping him?” Free in Deed is a fictional, filmic reinterpretation of events and themes provoked by this true story. The film explores the relationships and circumstances surrounding a faith healing and the forces that lead the characters to define themselves through beliefs.
According to The Southern Casting Call, the movie is inspired by the 2003 death of a child during what was supposed to be a miraculous Pentecostal healing service.
In order to tend for his own ill son, an intensely religious man secretly returns to his hometown where, years ago, his attempted miracle became a criminal act. With complexity and emotional power, Free in Deed explores faith and redemption in rural America. Sources: Indiegogo campaign page; Ion Cinema. Photo Source: Indiegogo.com.
Release Date: 1/13/15 (DVD, Digital HD, On Demand); 10/12/12 (Theatrical Release, limited) Genre: Drama Rating: R Running Time: 97 mins. Studio: Forward Movement, Lionsgate Home Entertainment and Code Black Films Director: Ava DuVernay Cast: Emayatzy Corinealdi ((Ruby) Omari Hardwick (Derek), Edwina Findley (Rosie), Lorraine Toussaint (Ruth), David Oyelowo (Brian), Sharon Lawrence (Fraine), Maya Gilbert (Gina).
Story: As Ruby rides a bus through the inner city streets, she wills herself to push away memories that crowd her. Four years earlier, she was a vibrant medical student married to the love of her life, Derek. Now, she makes her way to the maximum security prison on the outskirts of town. This is where her love now resides. Behind coiled razor wire and forty foot concrete walls. As the couple stares into the hallow end of an eight-year prison sentence, Ruby must learn to live another life, one marked by shame and separation.
But through a chance encounter with hard-working bus driver Brian and a stunning betrayal that shakes her to the core, she is soon propelled in new and often frightening directions of self-discovery. As we chronicle her turbulent yet transformative journey, we witness the emergence of a broken woman made whole. Source(s): middlenowhere.com, official site; IMDB.
Details: Year of Release:1920 Genre: Drama Rating: N/A Runtime: Unknown
Black & White
Silent Studio: Royal Garden Film Company Producer: Unknown Director:Unknown
Cast:
Herman DeLavalade
Augusta Williams
Irene Conn
Virgil Williams
Charles Allen
Synopsis
The mother of a light-skinned Black family raises her children to avoid the company of dark-skinned Blacks. The son, who has a dark-skinned sweetheart, rebels, and his mother sends him away to his uncle’s farm. When he is mistreated, he flees to the city. Later the boy returns home, a prosperous man, and meets up with his former love. In the end he manages to show his mother the error of her ways. Source: TCM.
Release Date: 1/13/15 (DVD); 1/17/14 (Sundance Film Festival)
Black Cinema Connection 