Directed by Michael Roemer
5 Episodes
With the passing of Michael Roemer earlier this year, American cinema lost one of its most eloquent voices, a long-unsung independent trailblazer whose profoundly humanist, unfailingly truthful vision had only in recent years come to be properly appreciated. A Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi Germany as a child, Roemer made only a handful of features, but each—including the landmark portrait of Black American struggle NOTHING BUT A MAN, the wryly offbeat gangster comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY, and the slow-burn domestic drama VENGEANCE IS MINE—is a small miracle of personal, defiantly anticommercial filmmaking, rich in feeling for character and place and graced with a vérité authenticity that reveals deep insights into human relationships.
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1:31:43Episode 1Nothing but a Man
Episode 1
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1964 • United States
Starring Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Julius HarrisMichael Roemer’s groundbreaking first feature, sensitively shot by his close collaborator Robert M. Young, is a still-resonant expression of humanity in the face of virulent prejudice. Made at the...
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1:20:26Episode 2The Plot Against Harry
Episode 2
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1969 • United States
Starring Martin Priest, Ben Lang, Maxine WoodsA treasure of American independent filmmaking that was neglected for decades until its triumphant rediscovery, writer-director-producer Michael Roemer’s feature follow-up to his landmark NOTHING BUT ...
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Dying
Episode 3
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1976 • United States
This documentary, made for public television, is an extraordinary, deeply affecting confrontation with that from which we so often try to look away: our own mortality. Through unflinching, vérité portraits of three terminally ill people—a middle-...
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1:40:52Episode 4Pilgrim, Farewell
Episode 4
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1980 • United States
Starring Elizabeth Huddle, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth FranzHaving chronicled the last days of terminally ill people for his documentary DYING, director Michael Roemer channeled his experiences making that film into this emotionally raw and wre...
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1:59:04Episode 5Vengeance Is Mine
Episode 5
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari MeyersLike director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisi...
