Looking for Langston

Summary A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually. View more details

Looking for Langston

Directed : Isaac Julien

Written : Isaac Julien

Stars : John Wilson Ben Ellison Matthew Baidoo Akim Mogaji

6.8

Details

Genres : Drama Biography

Release date : Jan 31, 1989

Countries of origin : United Kingdom

Language : English

Filming locations : London, Greater London, England, UK

Production companies : British Film Institute (BFI) Sankofa Film & Video

Summary A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually. View more details

Details

Genres : Drama Biography

Release date : Jan 31, 1989

Countries of origin : United Kingdom

Language : English

Filming locations : London, Greater London, England, UK

Production companies : British Film Institute (BFI) Sankofa Film & Video

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Carl Th. Dreyer: My Métier

Carl Th. Dreyer: My Métier

Carl Theodor Dreyer is a young journalist in Copenhagen when he gets involved in the early Danish film industry. He writes scripts and inter-titles, and for some years he is the main editor at Nordisk Film. After those years of apprenticeship he gets the opportunity to direct his first film in 1917. Dreyer wanted his films to carry his personal imprints down to the smallest details, and already in his first silent movies it's possible to find stylistic traits that characterize his entire film production until his last film in 1964. The settings of his first films are naturalistic, but for Dreyer realism is not an art in itself. Only psychological realism is. His main interest is not the outer life, but the inner, emotional life of human beings. Emotions are most visible in facial expressions, and Dreyer's films are full of close-ups of human faces. By capturing the subtle, visual expressions of his characters, Dreyer tries to reveal the feelings they conceal and the storms that are raging inside them. Although many of his films end in tragedy, his intention is always to create a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life. Dreyer's own character was just as complex and contradictory as his film characters. Many of the actors he worked with describe him as a modest, amiable man, who was quiet in his statements, but intense and strong-willed inside. While his outer appearance was utterly self-effacing, he had at the same time an insistent stubbornness, which didn't accept any artistic compromises.

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