Films with: Lumbly, Carl

Gospel at Colonus

Told from the perspective of a Black Pentecostal preacher and his congregation, this play dramatizes legendary Greek character Oedipus' last days on Earth. Having blinded himself out of guilt, Oedipus makes a solace-seeking pilgrimage to Colonus, the place where he believes he is meant to die. Primarily through song, the preacher and his congregation translate this story of redemption into a Christian parable.

DVD 10866

Nat Turner a troublesome property /

Evaluates the authenticity of the earliest source, "The Confessions of Nat Turner", assembled by a white Virginia lawyer from jailhouse interviews. It then follows the controversy over the Nat Turner story played out through history. Alvin Poussaint and Ossie Davis recall how Nat Turner became a hero in the Black community. Religious scholar Vincent Harding and legal scholar Martha Minow reflect on America's attitudes toward terrorism. One of the most bitter race battles of the 1960s is reexamined, when William Styron published his novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner.

DVD 8994

Soul of justice Thelton Henderson's American journey /

"Few judges provoke the ire of conservatives more than Thelton Henderson, Senior Judge of the Federal District Court of Northern California. His career in many ways parallels the larger historic arc of the Civil Rights movement and the changing vision of government -- from Jim Crow laws to Civil Rights victories and back again with recent attacks on affirmative action. Similarly reflected are the changes and conflicts in judicial philosophy during those 40 years. Henderson's decisions on affirmative action, environmental protection and prison reform --and the furors that surrounded them --serve as a prism on these changes and what they mean for American society"--California Newsreel website.

DVD 8551

To sleep with anger

Harry, a devilish charmer from the Deep South, turns up out of the blue on the South Central Los Angeles doorstep of his old friends. In short order, Harry's presence turns a seemingly peaceful household upside down, exposing smoldering tensions between parents and children, tradition and change, virtue and temptation. Interweaving evocative strains of gospel and blues with rich, poetic-realist images, it is a sublimely stirring film from an autonomous artistic sensibility, a portrait of family resilience.

DVD 13010