Harlem Renaissance: Films

Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s was the scene of a passionate outburst of creativity by African-American visual artists. Rich archival footage, including newsreels and photographs, recalls the influential force of the exhibitions, the vibrancy of Harlem and the many significant personalities that shaped the movement, such as William E. Harmon, W.E.B. DuBois and Alain Locke.

This self-described meditation on the life of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes addresses the possible, possibly imagined, life of the author as a gay man. Both documentary and fantasy, it blends archival footage with black and white paeans to a life that might have been--a Harlem nightclub from the 1920s, a London nightspot from the late eighties, various dream sequences--foregrounding gay sexual desire, constructed of a mélange of materials. Looking for Langston is not a mainstream film, but a short film, an avant-garde film, a gay film, and a black British film. Indeed, the prospect of viewing the film can be an off-putting one, considering its competing narrative lines as documentary, reclamation of an aspect of black history, rumination on the AIDS crisis, or pure fantasy.

short documentary tracing the life and times of Louise Alone Thompson Patterson, a civil rights and labor activist who was dubbed Madame Moscow for her role in America's communist movement

Examines Waller's career and his role in the New York literary, artistic and political movement of the 1920's known as the Harlem Renaissance.

A video anthology of African American poetry from 1960 to 1995. Black verse from the Harlem Renaissance through the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s is discussed and 25 noteable poets are introduced and profiled. Included in this anthology are Rita Dove, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni and Michael Harper.