The mission of The Department of Afro-American Research Arts and Culture to identify the global significance of the creative contributions pioneered by an international diaspora of Blackness
Search DAARAC's Archive

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Broken Strings (1940)









































Starring:
Storyline
The gifted hands of a world-renowned musician are crippled in a car crash. Reduced to giving lessons to children on the instrument he once mastered, violinist Arthur Williams (Clarence Muse) has become an embittered malcontent. Frustrated by the apparent lack of discipline in his students (one of them, his own son), and despairing of the decadent rise of primitive swing music, he is sorely in need of some kind of miracle-whether medical or musical.

Revered black actor Clarence Muse brings depth and gravity to this inspiring tale of the curative powers of love and music. Muse had a distinguished 50-year career in both "black" and "white" cinema, dating back to 1929, appearing in such classics as Huckleberry Finn (1931), White Zombie (1936), Count of Monte Cristo (1934), Show Boat (1936), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), Lost Weekend (1945), Porgy and Bess (1959), Car Wash (1976) and The Black Stallion (1979). Broken Strings also features an adolescent appearance by Our Gang graduate, Matthew "Stymie" Beard. Starring Clarence Muse, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Darby Jones. Directed by Bernard B. Ray.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Hollow Image (1979, TV Movie)















Starring:



Storyline
A black New York career girl, who has made it big in the fashion world, is torn between her new life "downtown" and her roots in Harlem with an old boyfriend still living there.

Separate But Equal (1991, TV Movie)















Starring:




Storyline
The year is 1950...and America is divided between black and white. Schools, restaurants, trains, and buses...even drinking fountains cannot be shared by both races. Although slavery has been outlawed for nearly a century, segregation is legal. But white and Negro facilities are separate and unequal...and the tension had reached a breaking point for the blacks of Clarendon County, South Carolina. When their request for a single school bus is denied by white school officials, a bitter, violent and courageous battle for justice and equality begins...pitting black against white and friend against neighbor all across the country.

The dramatic evens leading from a small rural classroom to the Supreme Court decision that outlawed segregation are powerfully reenacted in this contemporary screen classic, beautifully scripted and superbly portrayed by some of Hollywood's finest actors. Sidney Poitier is Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP lawyer who took the struggle for equal rights to the highest court in the land. Burt Lancaster plays John W. Davis, the opposing counsel, and Richard Kiley is Chief Justice Earl Warren, who rallied the Court to landmark ruling. Together they capture the complex emotional dynamics of one of the country's most significant and inspiring achievements. 

Taking the Heat (1993, TV Movie)

















Starring:



Storyline
New Yorker Micheal Norell suddenly finds himself hunted by both hit men and police after he witnesses a brutal murder committed by a crime kingpin. Now only a beautiful detective can get him to court alive and convince him to testify against the mobster.