Join us this February for our Black History Month Film Festival!
Sunday, February 8th at 2:00 p.m.: “Cooley High” (1975)
“Fun-loving and warm movie about high school life in the 1960’s. Preach, a serious-minded writer and Cochise, a basketball hero headed for college, are best friends at Cooley High in Chicago. Together, they cut classes to go to the zoo, crash parties, put the hustle on some hustlers, and dream of getting out of their impoverished, rough neighborhood.”
Tuesday, February 10th at 6:00 p.m.: “Emperor Jones” (1933)
“A cunning manipulator takes control of a Caribbean island and declares himself emperor.” Based on the Eugene O’Neill play and starring Paul Robeson as Brutus Jones.
Tuesday, February 17th at 2:00 p.m.: “Cornbread, Earl and Me” (1975)
“When a promising high school basketballer (Cornbread) is accused of rape and mistakenly killed by the police, it is up to his 11-year old brother Wilford and his pal Earl to find the courage to speak up and clear Cornbread’s name.” Starring Laurence Fishburne as Wilford Robinson.
Tuesday, February 24th at 2:00 p.m.: “Cabin in the Sky” (1943)
“The fable of rascally Little Joe, torn between the love of his good wife Petunia and the wiles of good-time bad girl Georgia Brown…and caught in a tug-of-war between emissaries from the Lord and Satan.” This Oscar-nominated film based on the Broadway play stars Ethel Waters as Petunia Jackson and Lena Horne as Georgia Brown and Louis Armstrong as The Trumpeter.
All films will be screened in the large auditorium at the Main Library, 161 Washington Ave., Albany. Call 427-4313 for details.
If you can’t make it, feel free to browse our Black History Month booklist:
Africans in America: America’s journey through slavery by Patricia Smith
Black Self-determination: a cultural history of African-American resistance by V.P. Franklin
The Routledge Atlas of African American History by Jonathan Halperin Earle
My Soul Has Grown Deep: classics of early African-American literature edited by John Edgar Wideman
The Birth of Black America: the first African Americans and the pursuit of freedom at Jamestown by Tim Hashaw
The Timetables of African-American History: a chronology of the most important people and events in African-American history by Sharon Harley
Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: five slave narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815 edited by Henry Louis Gates
Black Legacy: America’s hidden heritage by William Dillon Piersen
New Day in Babylon: the Black power movement and American culture, 1965-1975 by William L. Van Deburg
The Trouble They Seen : the story of Reconstruction in the words of African Americans edited by Dorothy Sterling
The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader edited by David L. Lewis
