MATERIALS
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-Video: NOTHING BUT A MAN
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-Book: Photographs of the actors from the “BLACK HOLLYWOOD 1900 to 1970”
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1. The actors will decide which scenes they want to work on and transcribe them from the movie. Certainly we will work on some of the scenes already described above.
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2. We will discuss the dramatic conflict which is the power struggle between Duff and the racist power structure. The scenes between the high school principal and the drunken drop-outs will be explored.
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3. We will talk about Dixon’s performance and how it carries the film. As actors we will deal with how to express anger. In Dixon’s amazing performance we see an actor who is maintaining and projecting a rage that is kept in check.
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4. We will look at Dixon’s work and point out moments when we see how anger can cut two ways. Does his anger really get at the people who try to make him feel less than a man? How do we see that his anger is also internalized.
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5. Duff’s relationship with his alcoholic father and illegitimate son will be explored through improvisation and character analysis. Using their imagination the actors will think of personal events in Duff’s life that will be explored through improvisations on his previous life, days in his life that we do not see in the movie (e.g. the day that Duff first discovers that his father is an alcoholic. How old is he? Where is his mother? etc.) The situations the actors think of will lead to important class discussions and will deepen their understanding of the character’s inner life.
SIDNEY POITIER
Sidney Poitier was born in Miami, Florida, in 1927. Both his parents were uneducated farmers from Cat Island in the Bahamas. He was brought up on Cat Island, and at the age of 15 he went back to Miami, beginning his American journey that eventually brought him to super star status in American films.
Donald Bogle makes the point that Poitier was the black star of the mid 1950s because it was the integrationist decade and he was the model integrationist hero. He was educated, intelligent, spoke proper English, and dressed conservatively. He was the complete antithesis of the black buffoons that had appeared in so many Hollywood movies.
His first movie, NO WAY OUT (1950), began a cycle of problem pictures made in the 1950s. He appeared in CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY (1952), RED BALL EXPRESS (1952), GO, MAN, GO (1953), THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955), EDGE OF THE NIGHT (1957), and THE DEFIANT ONES (1958). Poitier continued making films, not only acting but also directing. He is currently working on a film of Nelson Mandela’s life in which he plays Mandela.
The film we will be studying will be the film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s prize winning play A RAISIN IN THE SUN (1961). In the film Poitier plays Walter Lee Younger, the role he had created for the Broadway production. It is the story of the Younger family and is set in a small Southside Chicago apartment. The matriarch, Lena Younger, has dreamed of owning a house and escaping from this windowless flat. The apartment is shared with her son Walter, his wife Ruth, their young son Travis, and Lena’s daughter, Beneatha. Lena’s chance comes with the ten-thousand-dollar insurance check left to her by her husband. The film and play will be examined in the following lesson plan.