Cabin in the Sky - this week at Cinematheque

This week at the Chauvel Cinematheque, see Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky, screening Saturday the 30th of August at 12noon and Monday the 1st of September at 6:30pm.

Cabin in the Sky USA/1943/B&W/88mins/16mm
Dir: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Rex Ingram, Kenneth Spencer, Duke Ellington and his orchestra.

After being seriously injured in a barroom brawl, an idle gambling husband is reformed by a dream of his own death, with God and Satan battling for his soul. Minnelli's directorial debut, based on a Broadway musical, featured an all African-American cast. Although it falls prey to the stereotyping typical of the representation of black characters in popular culture at the time, Minnelli's sensitivity towards the material and the combined talent of the cast redeems the film. Despite its limited potential for distribution (few Southern theatres of 1943 would touch it), MGM still applied its A-plus production values to the film turning out sumptuous dreamlike sets and production numbers.


Screens with:

Oreos with Attitude USA/1990/Colour/27mins/16mm
Dir: Larry Carty.
Cast: Jackie Roberts, Keith Smith, Larry Maxwell.
This satire of racial stereotyping, produced by uber-indie producer Christine Vachon and director Todd Haynes, follows Janet and Richard, a black yuppie couple living in New York. After calculating that the risk of producing a dark-skinned baby is too great they decide to adopt a white child 'to promote racial harmony'. But it seems that little Jimmy has other ideas.