Henry Louis Gates Jr. Movies
- 2009
This documentary takes an in-depth look at legendary president Abraham Lincoln, examining the story behind his historic presidency, with controversial issues of race, religion, and civil rights surrounding him from the moment he entered public life. Sometimes prone to depression, Lincoln ascended to the most powerful position in America through many complex avenues involving both egalitarianism and ambition, revealing that the man's mythic image in historic memory has often been left incomplete. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- 2007
Actress and television talk show host Oprah Winfrey shares her knowledge on how to construct a detailed African American family tree in this companion to the best-selling book by author Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Genealogist Tony Burroughs and historian John Thornton offer expert advice on researching ones past as excerpts from the documentary Oprah's Roots display just how America's most beloved media figure used genealogy to discover surprising details about her origins. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker David Peterson directs the documentary Let the Church Say Amen. The World Missions for Christ Church exists inside a small storefront in Washington, D.C. While the city government lacks funds and power, this little church reaches out to make necessary, positive changes in the community. Homelessness, violence, and drug addiction are all faced head-on by the church members, as missionaries seek out those who have been left behind by poverty and injustice. Peterson presents faith as a force of hope and inspiration within a crumbling, neglected city. Let the Church Say Amen premiered the 2003 SilverDocs Documentary Film Festival and screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival as part of the American Spectrum competition. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pastor Bobby Perkins, Dr. JoAnn Perkins, (more)
- 2003
Part of the PBS program Independent Lens, A Place of Our Own is a documentary about an affluent black family vacationing in Martha's Vineyard, where filmmaker Stanley Nelson revisits his family's summer home in the town of Oak Bluffs. His family and other African-Americans have vacationed there for generations, despite the larger nation being infected with racism. After spending nearly 40 summers at his father's special resort, Nelson tells this personal tale of an upper-class black community, where doctors, lawyers, and other professionals worked hard to make Oak Bluffs a safe social environment. A Place of Our Own was shown at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the documentary competition before debuting on PBS in February 2004. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- 1998
Frontline correspondent and Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examines the widening gap between the upper and lower classes of black America while exploring just how we could simultaneously have the largest black middleclass and largest black underclass in the history of the United States. As black success continues on the upswing, Gates highlights how that positive trend is offset by deepening black despair. Could it be that the upper black classes share more in common with their white neighbors and colleagues than the friends and family they abandoned in the inner cities? Three decades after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., many American blacks have gained middle class status thanks to the civil rights movement and affirmative action. But numbers indicate that just as many were left to contend with poverty in the ever-expanding underclass as well. By intertwining his own life story against that of young African Americans coming of age in the early 21st Century, Gates compares the choices that he was faced with as a young man against the choices that the youth of today are faced with. Interviews with prominent blacks and civil rights veterans reveal that a large number of black leaders believe that issues of economic deprivation and class divide must first be addressed before any substantial improvement can be seen, while a study of the relationship between structural and behavioral issues that cause lower class blacks to fall further behind leads to a candid discussion about personal responsibility and the devastating effects of violent gangster culture. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 1998
Perhaps no major figure of the 1960s led a more complex or controversial life than onetime Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver. A revolutionary initially famous for his prison memoir Black Ice (in which he horrifyingly advocated rape as a form of insurrection), Cleaver also wielded behavior including assault, theft, and drug-pushing, and openly advocated mass murder in his political rallies. Yet somehow, Cleaver won fame as an astute voice of the period, and for many years evaded doing time. He then dramatically reinvented himself in the 1980s as a right-wing Republican, born-again Christian and staunch Reaganite, before lapsing into an ugly bout of cocaine addiction and then dying a quiet death, from prostate cancer, in 1998. In 1997, Cleaver consented to an interview with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for a discussion of his life and career as a social activist, and his role as a civil rights crusader. The documentary Leaving Cleaver tells Cleaver's life story, drawing from extracts of the Gates interview, period footage of Cleaver in action and commentary from Cleaver's wife Kathleen. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eldridge Cleaver, Henry Louis Gates Jr., (more)
