HELENA-WEST HELENA – Delta Cultural Center is beginning a Saturday summer movie series just in time to aid visitors seeking an air-conditioned escape from the summer’s heat.

The DCC will present seven movies featuring African-American performers and filmmakers at mid-day Saturdays over the next several weeks to complement the “Imaging Blackness” exhibit of film posters currently on display at the DCC Visitors Center.

All movie presentations will be free of charge and will be held on Saturdays beginning at 1 p.m. in the “Delta Sounds” Gallery at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street in historic downtown Helena-West Helena, Arkansas. The public is welcome and warmly encouraged to attend. “We happened upon an unexpected opportunity to exhibit ‘Imaging Blackness,’” recalled DCC Director Katie Harrington. “From there, we began thinking about how to complement this incredible display and bring more people inside to see it. A free film series featuring great black screen performances and stories over several eras and decades seemed to be a natural fit. As a bonus, it provides folks with something fun to do out of the sun on a Saturday afternoon.”

Films slated are: June 20: “A Soldier’s Story” (1984, rated PG) with Howard E. Rollins Jr., Adolph Caesar, and Denzel Washington, a racially charged murder mystery set at an Army base in the segregated South, filmed in part in Arkansas at Fort Smith and Clarendon; June 27: Spike Lee’s acclaimed civil rights documentary “4 Little Girls” (1997, not rated); July 4: Bandleader and Arkansas native Louis Jordan’s musical “Beware” (1946, not rated); July 11: “Cooley High” (1975, rated PG), a poignant coming of age story set in an early 1960s urban Chicago neighborhood; July 18: The fictionalized biography of boxer Jack Johnson, “The Great White Hope” (1970, rated PG-13), starring James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander; July 25: “The Wiz” (1978, rated G), the urban adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” featuring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsy Russell, Ted Ross, and Richard Pryor; and August 1: Director Otto Preminger’s screen adaptation of “Porgy and Bess” (1959, not rated), starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, and Sammy Davis Jr. The “Imaging Blackness” exhibit traces the growth of African-American participation in the movies, utilizing more than 40 vintage black movie posters from 1915 through 2002 from the archives of the Indiana University Black Film Center at Bloomington. “Imaging Blackness” will continue at the DCC through Friday, August 7.

The 1915 date is important in framing the exhibit, not because it represents the earliest film portrayals by black actors, but because of the film productions that sprang up in reaction to director D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.” This 1915 landmark film was lauded as a masterwork by many and lambasted by others for a storyline that lionized the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed blacks in a variety of base stereotypes.

The exhibit includes posters for “Sleepy Sam, the Sleuth” (1915), “The Green-Eyed Monster” (1920), and “The Flying Ace” (1926) as silent era examples of films with positive depictions of blacks made primarily for African-American audiences. Later posters advertising “The Bronze Venus” (1938), starring Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Harry Belafonte in “Island in the Sun” (1957), and Sidney Poitier’s Oscar-winning performance in “Lilies of the Field” (1963) explore the evolution of black film roles in Hollywood’s movie industry.

The wider depiction of black actors in the 1970s is explored with director Gordon Parks’ acclaimed “The Learning Tree” (1969) and several posters for “blaxploitation” movies including “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (1970), “Superfly” (1972), and action star Pam Grier’s “Coffy” (1973). More recent posters include the dramas “A Soldier’s Story” (1984), “The Color Purple” (1985), and “Beloved” (1998), as well as the documentaries “Say Amen, Somebody” (1982) and “Jim Brown: All-American” (2002). “Imaging Blackness” is a program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance, with the Arkansas Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Gallery hours at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street and the nearby DCC Depot at 95 Missouri Street are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. “King Biscuit Time,” the nation’s longest-running blues radio program, is hosted each weekday at the DCC Visitors Center by “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. “Delta Sounds,” hosted by DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew and Payne, is broadcast each Friday from 1 to 1:30 p.m.

For more information, interested persons can call the Delta Cultural Center at (870)-338-4350 or toll free at (800)-358-0972 or visit the DCC online at www.deltaculturalcenter.com.

The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission. -- 30 --

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