Home Is Where the Heart Is: Black Cinema's Exploration of Home
Explorations of family as home, curated by IU Cinema guest programmer in residency Maya Cade of the Black Film Archive.
Your Children Come Back to You | Directed by Alile Sharon Larkin: Your Children Come Back to You is a contemporary allegory about values and assimilation. The film literalizes the meaning of a "mother country" by means of the story of a young girl, Tovi, torn between two surrogate mothers: one comfortably bourgeois, the other nationalist. Cinematography by Charles Burnett and co-starring Angela Burnett. [27 mins; drama; English]
“Director Alile Sharon Larkin’s film masterfully presents a child’s perspective on wealth and social inequality.” – Samuel B. Prime, UCLA
“[Larkin is] a young and original filmmaker whose pride and sensitivity is matched, happily, by an equal aesthetic sense … If there’s any other film as tender as this one, I haven’t seen it.” – Ruby Rich, The Chicago Reader
“This work provides a raw, revelatory glimpse of a single mother making ends meet, as seen through the eyes of her precocious daughter.” – Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Claudine | Directed by John Berry: A unique film on the emotional truths of living under the big, omnipresent force of the welfare office, Claudine follows the titular character—played by the dynamic Diahann Carroll—as she raises her children by working as a domestic maid for rich, white families. Her life is changed when Roop (James Earl Jones), a charming garbageman, catches her fancy. The lives of both begin to feel richer and more worth living, but also more complicated. [92 mins; drama, comedy, romance; English]
"Claudine is a valuable document of '70s-era Harlem lives that pays admirable respect to the neighborhood's grim realities." — Imran Khan, PopMatters
"Works as both a gentle romantic comedy and a hard-hitting social critique." — Matt Brunson, Film Frenzy
Home Is Where the Heart Is: Black Cinema's Exploration of Home is generously supported by the Women’s Philanthropy Leadership Council, the Black Philanthropy Circle, the Department of African American & African Diaspora Studies, Bloomington High School Black Culture Club, IDS' Black Voices, and the IU Black Student Union.
