American Studies

This video features legendary musicians Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, who clear up the mystery of a fabled incident in jazz history in the early Forties when the three were members of Cab Calloway's famous band.

Kalmanoff, who studied composition at Harvard with Walter Piston, has written over fifty-four works for the musical theater, including seventeen operas, all of which feature lyrical, witty and inventive music.

This video traces the forgotten roots and celebrates the continuing legacy of Blues music in the Mississippi Delta, interweaving rare archival footage of the South's sharecropping era with performances by Blues veterans Muddy Waters, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James and Howlin' Wolf.

Hosted by Cheech Marin, this documentary examines the work of several Hispanic- American writers and how their poems, short stories and novels reflect what it means and what it's like to grow up Hispanic in America.

Set against a background of farming, saw-milling and moonshining activities in rural Kentucky during the Depression, this short film dramatizes the use of violence as a socially accepted form of "folk justice."

Focusing on the beat poetry scene of the late Fifties, this film poem celebrates a colorful generation of American poets, featuring interviews with Stuart Perkoff, Aya, Jack Hirschman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Allen Ginsberg, who read their poems and discuss what it means to be a poet in America.

This video memoir of one of the most talented and fascinating writers of the 20th century features rare archival footage and photos, plus interviews with Hemingway's son, Jack, as well as numerous friends and associates, and Hemingway biographers and scholars.

This video profiles five contemporary American performance poets who have taken their poetry and its celebration of language and creative expression into new public venues.

Scandalize My Name examines the way Red Scare politics were used to impede the emergence of African-Americans as full participants in the political, social, and cultural aspects of postwar American life. Because television was born into this era and adopted the political attitudes of the time, the story is told through the confrontations of African-American performers with blacklists, loyalty oaths, and discrimination in casting.

This video features poet Marc Levy, a Vietnam veteran who served in 1970 as a fighting medic in the U.S. First Cavalry Division, who reads poetic prose based on his combat and postwar experiences.

Tells the story of Eddie Torres, who recruits the best of New York's salseros-Hispanic club and street dancers-and, with the musical collaboration of Tito Puente, molds them into a professional dance troupe.

Scenes of class sessions at the Marin Ballet in California, and the choreography and rehearsals leading to a public performance, are interspersed with interviews with three young dancers and commentary from their instructors on the intensely competitive world of professional dance.