Summary: I have the strength to walk my own path, no matter how hard, in my search for reality, and not cling to the splendid wagon of desperate illusions. A writer of novels, short stories, folktales, plays, and essays, Zora Neale Hurston combined a hunger for research and a desire to penetrate the deepest of popular beliefs with a truly exquisite narrative talent. This illuminating biography of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: In Monroeville, Alabama, Harper Lee's model for Maycomb, To Kill a Mockingbird is celebrated as a tribute to Southern life. This hard-edged program juxtaposes white and black experiences in the racially segregated South of the 1930s-1960s to deepen the understanding of the novel's portrayal of racial tension and tolerated judicial bias. Interviews, archival footage, and photographs combine to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, a portrait of friendship and loneliness, is a tribute to the half million who headed to California in search of work and the American dream. In this program, Dr. Susan Shillinglaw of the Center for Steinbeck Studies discusses labor exploitation in the Salinas valley during the Depression era to reinforce an appreciation of the precarious lifestyle faced by...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: Maggie sees the old family quilt-an heirloom already promised to her-as something with practical utility as well as tradition. Her educated, social activist sister wants to hang it on the wall as folk art. With whom will their mother side? A study in class differences and the reclamation of Black history, Alice Walker's short story "Everyday Use" is beautifully realized in this dramatization.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: On a "bright, frozen day" in Mississippi, 95-year-old Phoenix Jackson makes her mythic journey into town for the medicine her grandson needs. Touching upon themes of family, love, aging, and poverty, this dramatization of Eudora Welty's classic story "A Worn Path" provides both a heroic image of the human spirit enduring against tremendous odds and a poignant commentary on the African-American...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program is a comprehensive portrait of John Steinbeck and the America he depicted, providing students with an appreciation of one of the 20th century's definitive literary voices. Incorporating historic events ranging in magnitude from the devastating Dust Bowl to poignant local histories, Steinbeck portrayed a nation ravaged by poverty and injustice, in which his characters, often drawn...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: I was saved from sin when I was going on 13. But not really saved. It happened like this. So begins this powerful dramatization of "Salvation," Langston Hughes' eloquent autobiographical story that illustrates how his aunt's well-meaning efforts to bring him into the spiritual fold resulted in a moral crisis. Calmly waiting for Jesus to appear to him in the hot, crowded church, young Langston's...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005