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Strange Fruit (2002) More at IMDbPro »


Overview

User Rating:
7.6/10   67 votes
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Up 36% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Writer:
Joel Katz (writer)
Genre:
Plot:
In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school... more | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Awards:
4 wins more
User Reviews:
Lady Day ushers in rare videotape. more (5 total)

Cast

  (Credited cast)
Dorothy Thigpen ... Narrator (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Amina Baraka ... Herself
Amiri Baraka ... Himself
E.M. 'Woody' Beck ... Himself
Don Byron ... Himself (archive footage)
Hazel Carby ... Herself
Michael Denning ... Himself
Henry Foner ... Himself

Milton Gabler ... Himself (as Milt Gabler)
Farah Jasmine Griffin ... Herself
Billie Holiday ... Herself (archive footage)
Robert Howard ... Himself
Bernie Kassoy ... Himself
Honey Kassoy ... Herself
Abbey Lincoln ... Herself
Michael Meeropol ... Himself
Robert Meeropol ... Himself
Jeffrey Melnick ... Himself
Rich Rusk ... Himself

Pete Seeger ... Himself (archive footage)
Rev. C.T. Vivian ... Himself

Cassandra Wilson ... Herself (archive footage)
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Additional Details

Runtime:
57 min
Country:
Language:

FAQ

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5 out of 8 people found the following review useful.
Lady Day ushers in rare videotape., 13 January 2005
8/10
Author: movibuf1962 from Washington, DC

I only wanted to see this documentary for one reason: to watch Ms. Holiday perform the title song. The song's extremely sad, bitter lyrics are legendary, but I'd heard for years that it had been given something of a dramatic, almost eccentric, interpretation by Ms. Holiday herself. I'd assumed that if there was a surviving recording of it, it was in some B-level motion picture or newsreel. And here's the big surprise of the documentary: when we finally see Holiday, it is not on film, but on live television. A surviving b/w reel-to-reel videotape of a 1958 (or 1959) BBC broadcast shows Ms. Holiday- beautiful, regal, but somewhat melancholy (with hair severely pulled back and in a glittering dress)- stylishly reciting with piano accompaniment for 3 minutes of what must be the earliest surviving videotape ever recorded-- and just a scant 5 months before her death. It's like two phenomena were jelled into one performance: modern television technology and an artist very much at the end of her own life. Blew me out of the water!!

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