Friday Foster (Arthur Marks, 1975)
What better way to celebrate Black Heritage Month than with a screening of the start-studded political thriller(?!) and Pam Grier vehicle Friday Foster, based on the Jim Lawrence’s newspaper strip from 1970-1974? Notably starring Yaphet Kotto, Eartha Kitt and Scatman Crother (as well as Godfrey Cambridge known for his performance in Melvin Van Peebles’s brilliant 1970 Watermelon Man), Friday Foster follows Grier as a professional photographer and while she doesn’t quite reach Coffy levels of ass-kicking(which I’m ashamed to say I’ve only ever seen half of), the film is tremendous funky fun.
My second home, a.k.a. Blue Sunshine (3660, St-Laurent, 3rd Floor) will be celebrating Black History Month with their incredible programming all month, so if you’re in Montreal, I’d highly recommend checking it out. You wouldn’t want to miss 16mm prints of William Crain’s Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, Larry Cohen’s Hell Up in Harlem or Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, would you? I’m personally highly anticipating The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: an Urban History (2011), which screens next Saturday.
