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Movies Houstonians Love: Nothing But a Man

Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man (1964) is a forceful treatment of the rural black experience after segregation, but the film fell into the art-house circuit and never achieved proper critical or popular recognition. Rick Lowe, founder of Project Row Houses, has deemed this movie his favorite film for the screening series Movies Houstonians Love, and brings it rightfully into the light.

Donald Bogle, author of Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks, describes Man as an inexpensive but sensitively made movie that offers a “grimly realistic and cynical look at black America.” There’s a quiet honesty about the movie that revels in the dusty black-and-white of Robert Young’s cinematography, and in the extraordinary performances of Ivan Dixon as railroad worker Duff and Abbey Lincoln as Josie, the schoolteacher Duff falls in love with and eventually marries. Julius Harris appears as Will, Duff’s drunken, abusive father, and Gloria Foster as Lee, Will’s wife. (Never having the career that her talent warranted, Foster found a new generation of fans with her performance as the oracle in The Matrix.) 7 p.m. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1001 Bissonnet. For information, call 713-639-7515 or visit www.mfah.org/film. $6 to $7.
Fri., March 18, 7 p.m., 2011

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D.L. Groover has contributed to countless reputable publications including the Houston Press since 2003. His theater criticism has earned him a national award from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (AAN) as well as three statewide Lone Star Press Awards for the same. He's co-author of the irreverent appreciation, Skeletons from the Opera Closet (St. Martin's Press), now in its fourth printing.
Contact: D. L. Groover