The Killing Floor
Celebrating Black History
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1h 58m
Directed by Bill Duke | 118 mins | 1984
Having made inroads in Hollywood as a character actor, Bill Duke made his directorial debut with this raw and deeply researched made-for-TV movie set in Chicago’s stockyards in the early days of the Great Migration. Duke mines the volatile intersection of race and the organized labor movement, following a Southern former sharecropper who finds himself caught up in the splintering politics of his new workplace.
Up Next in Celebrating Black History
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Chameleon Street
Directed by Wendell B. Harris Jr. | 95 mins | 1989
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1990 but criminally underseen for decades, the sole feature by Wendell B. Harris Jr.—a canny, inventive, and remarkably assured comedy based on the incredible escapades of real-life con artist William... -
Ganja & Hess
Directed by Bill Gunn | 113 mins | 1973
Cut by timid distributors and inappropriately marketed as grindhouse blaxploitation, this eerie, sui generis work by utterly iconoclastic director Bill Gunn ("Personal Problems") is, in its original form, nothing short of a masterpiece of ‘70s American cine... -
A Screaming Man
Directed by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | 91 mins | 2010
The first film from Chad to feature in the Cannes competition, where it was awarded the 2010 Jury Prize, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s affecting, postcolonial father-son story is set against the backdrop of civil war, but flouts war film conventions. Har...