St. Clair Bourne
A documentary on the career of William Greaves, featuring Greaves, his wife and co-producer Louise Archambault, actor Ruby Dee, filmmaker St. Clair Bourne, and film scholar Scott MacDonald. Released within Criterion's Symbiopsychotaxiplasm set.
An intimate look at the life and career of Gordon Parks a true Renaissance man who has excelled as a photographer, novelist, journalist, poet, musician and filmmaker.
The Behind-the-Scenes documentary of the dramatic comedy Do the Right Thing.
This video portrait, filmed in the days leading up to Amiri Baraka’s appeal of his 90-day sentence for resisting arrest following an argument in his car outside the 8th Street Playhouse movie theater, documents Baraka at his radio show, at home with his wife and children, and performing at readings. It is a delicate vision of a revolutionary who has grown quieter—though never at rest, and as sage as ever.
Bourne's first fiction film, which stars Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as an unemployed musician who falls for a dancer on the streets of Hollywood. - Wheeler Winston Dixon, The Exploding Eye: A Re-Visionary History of 1960's American Experimental Cinema
The film mixes scenes of the city of Chicago with musical performances and interviews with people connected with the Blues. In Big City Blues, the film examines the links between the past and the present: the old time blues singer Jim Brewer is presented alongside Son Seals, Queen Sylvia Embry and Bill Branch.
Bourne documenting the options granted to high school students who want to attend college
Short documentary made for a segment of National Education Television's Black Journal television program. The segment focuses on the life of Alice Coltrane and her children in the wake of the death of her husband, famed jazz magician John Coltrane. This film was shot sometime during 1970; three years after the death of John Coltrane.
A film examining Black musicians in the record industry, including Smokey Robinson, Isaac Hayes, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. - Wheeler Winston Dixon, The Exploding Eye
The 1960s black student movement at Duke University evolved into a separate institution to study and engage with the history and culture of the African diaspora. This film was produced for the National Educational Television (WNET) Black Journal.
A short documentary subject made for National Educational Television's Black Journal television program documenting a political rally in Newark, the 1970 mayoral campaign of Ken Gibson, and an African American voter registration drive with special musical performance by Stevie Wonder.
A news magazine series which features stories related to the African-American experience, examining some of the contemporary issues facing the black community and profiling its public figures.
One in a series of 13 documentaries on renowned American poets produced by the New York Center for Visual History. Described by director St. Clair Bourne as “a narrative performance documentary,” this category-defiant film on the life of poet and writer Hughes and the times in which he lived and worked moves from America to Senegal to Paris, from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance to the Black Pride awakening of the 1960s.
An educational film about engineering, modern technology and problem solving; filmed in New York, Philadelphia, Michigan and Newark. Produced for the Engineers Council for Professional Development, Inc.
