Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space

Jan 17, 2023

1h 52m

★ 5.0

Overview

Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

PBS

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space Trailers

Cast

Self (archive footage)

Zora Neale Hurston

Narrator (voice)

Vanessa Williams

Zora Neale Hurston (voice)

Bahni Turpin

Self

Lee D. Baker

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

6.7

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty

Jun 2, 1938

Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.

5.6

The Domino Effect

Nov 28, 2014

Rafael - the minister of sports of an unrecognized country, and Natasha - a Russian opera singer, try living together in Abkhazia - a war-torn future-less country. Observing their difficult relations, we see life in a place marked by war and nationalism. The film portrays trapped people dreaming of peace, normality and happiness.

7.2

Dominguinhos

May 22, 2014

Through rare and precious footages and gigs with great artists such as Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Hermeto Pascoal, Djavan, Nara Leao, Luiz Gonzaga, among many others, "Dominguinhos" reveals this genius of Brazilian music, creator of a deeply authentic, universal and contemporary work. The film values the sensory cinematic experience, a journey driven by Dominguinhos his own.

6.8

Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams

Mar 1, 2006

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.

7.1

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Oct 9, 2003

A homeless musician finds meaning in his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.

0.0

Vive La France

Aug 31, 2014

Kua and Teriki will soon get married. They live on the distant Tureia island in the French Polynesia, Pacific Ocean and have just been told that something is wrong with their son Maokis heart. It is a consequence of living only 100 km away from the island of Moruroa, where France has tested 193 atom bombs for 30 years. Several of their family members are sick and Moruroa can soon collapse, which can lead to a tsunami likely to drown all of them. Vive La France is a personal and intimate story about harvesting the consequences of the French atomic program.

0.0

Yulu

Jan 1, 2011

The film uses a documentary approach to tell the stories of 12 Chinese pioneers, chosen from the fields of business and the arts. The protagonists reflect upon their life journeys against the backdrop of modern China.

7.0

Blame It on Fidel!

Nov 29, 2006

A 9-year-old girl weathers big changes in her household as her parents become radical political activists in 1970-71 Paris.

7.3

Grey Gardens

Feb 19, 1976

Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.

0.0

Free Tibet

Sep 11, 1998

A film about the Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco in 1996.

7.0

Ondřej Sekora – Práce všeho druhu

Sep 26, 2019

No overview available.

7.3

Frost/Nixon

Oct 15, 2008

For three years after being forced from office, Nixon remained silent. But in summer 1977, the steely, cunning former commander-in-chief agreed to sit for one all-inclusive interview to confront the questions of his time in office and the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency. Nixon surprised everyone in selecting Frost as his televised confessor, intending to easily outfox the breezy British showman and secure a place in the hearts and minds of Americans. Likewise, Frost's team harboured doubts about their boss's ability to hold his own. But as the cameras rolled, a charged battle of wits resulted.

4.7

Autumn Girl

Nov 12, 2021

Polish film and music icon Kalina Jedrusik, a scandalous free-spirited sex symbol, fights for her independence in the prude society of the 1960s.

7.6

The Corporation

Sep 10, 2003

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

5.6

Fort McCoy

Jan 1, 2014

Unable to serve in World War II because of a heart condition, a barber moves his family adjacent to a Wisconsin army base and prisoner-of-war camp to provide his services. But even in rural America -- far from the frontline -- the war finds victims.

0.0

The Empty Center

Jan 1, 1998

Steyerl’s film traces the impact of an influx of transnational companies on the city dwellers of Berlin in post-reunification Germany. The effect of the changing economy and politics on the city and its inhabitants is echoed through their physical relocation to its outer edges. In 1990, squatters proclaim a socialist republic on the death strip. Eight years later, the new headquarters of Mercedes Benz are built in the same location. The film makes use of slow super-impositions to uncover a journey across changing architectural and cultural boundaries. "The Empty Centre" tries to give a voice and a history to those who continue to be marginalised by the simultaneous dismantling and reconstruction of the borders which they are trying to cross.

5.6

I Remember Me

Oct 11, 2000

In 1984-85, people at Lake Tahoe fell ill with flu symptoms, but they didn't get better. Medical literature documents similar outbreaks: in 1934 at LA county hospital, in 1948-49 in Iceland, in 1956 in Punta Gorda, Florida. The malady now has a name, chronic fatigue syndrome, and filmmaker Kim Snyder, who suffered from the disease for several years, tells her story and talks to victims and their families, and to physicians and researchers: is it viral, it is psychosomatic, is it one disease or several (a syndrome) ; what's the CDC doing about it; what's it like to have a disease that's not yet understood? Her inquiry takes her to Punta Gorda and to a high-school graduation.

6.3

American Teen

Jul 25, 2008

A documentary on seniors at a high school in a small Indiana town and their various cliques.

6.2

Germany in Autumn

Mar 3, 1978

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space Trailers