MoMA Presents: Anthony Harvey’s Dutchman and Billy Jackson’s We Are Universal

When Amiri Baraka’s explosive one-act play Dutchman premiered off Broadway in 1964, it outraged and electrified audiences in equal measure before winning an Obie Award as the best American play of the year, making Baraka the first Black playwright to receive this recognition. Despite its critical success, the play’s scalding critique of liberal racial politics proved too controversial for US film studios, leading producer Henry T. Weinstein to seek both financing and creative freedom in Britain.

At London’s Twickenham Studios, first-time director Anthony Harvey, fresh from editing Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, transformed the theatrical material through sophisticated cutting and claustrophobic camera work into a dynamic work of cinema, as a charged encounter between a buttoned-down Black professional (Al Freeman Jr., who originated the role on stage) and a dangerously seductive white woman (Shirley Knight ) unfolds within a meticulously reconstructed New York City subway car.

Grove Press, the legendary publisher of avant-garde and politically radical literature, supported the film’s eventual American distribution through their nascent cinema division, though its circulation remained limited primarily to university film societies and urban art houses, and Dutchman virtually disappeared from view when Grove Press dissolved in 1985. This restoration from the Film Foundation and the Academy Film Archive recaptures the original luster of Gerry Turpin’s black-and-white cinematography.

We Are Universal, a 1971 documentary short directed by the prolific filmmaker and activist Billy Jackson (Didn’t We Ramble On?), surveys African American arts and culture, drawing inspiration from the “Black Is Beautiful” movement. It features onscreen commentary from such prominent figures as Jesse Jackson, Quincy Jones, Nikki Giovanni, Babatunde Olatunji, Hugh Masekela, and Freddie Hubbard. It is presented here in a restored version from Pittsburgh Sound + Image.

Organized by Dave Kehr, Curator, Department of Film.