Directed by Michael Roemer • 1964 • United States
Starring Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Julius Harris
Michael 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 height of the civil rights movement, NOTHING BUT A MAN reveals the toll of systemic racism through its honest portrait of a southern Black railroad worker (Ivan Dixon) confronting the daily challenges of discrimination and economic precarity, as he attempts to settle down with his new wife (jazz great Abbey Lincoln) and track down his father (Julius Harris). Admired by Malcolm X and now recognized as a landmark of American cinema, this tender film grounds its social critique in characters of unforgettable complexity and truth.
Up Next in Directed by Michael Roemer
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Dying
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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Pilgrim, Farewell
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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Vengeance Is Mine
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...
