Classic Black Cinema Series: Take A Giant Step

(1959) Spencer Scott has two problems; he suffers the normal anguish of a teen-ager in the process of growing up with "misunderstanding parents" and is also a black boy in a predominately-white New England town. He is accepted by his white-boy classmates because of his athletic ability, but their parents object to his color. As a Black adolescent navigating a White world, he receives advice from his parents that is often ambivalent. On one hand, they teach him racial pride and self-respect, but they simultaneously advise him to compromise with his white friends and suffer their lack of understanding. One day, he is expelled from school for violently protesting his history teacher's remarks about the shortcomings of black people during the Civil War. Exhausted of the white perspective, he wanders into the black section of town and encounters four prostitutes at a bar.

A film series specifically designed as a vehicle to expose the community to the vast artistic value black film has had throughout the years. The goal is to appeal to as diverse a population as possible and further the appreciation of Black cinema.

Curator and host, Felix Curtis, came to Charlotte from the Oakland/San Francisco Bay area where he curated The San Francisco Black Film Festival and Black Filmworks, the annual film festival component of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, where he later served as Executive Director.