DVD: The Great Debaters

$29.95

"The Great Debaters is based on the true story of the Wiley College debate team, and the events in the film take place in 1935 at the small historical Black college in Marshall, Texas. When the main character in the film, Melvin B. Tolson, played by Denzel Washington, first appears on screen he is dressed as a sharecropper running through what looks like a swamp, with a pulsating blues rhythm in the background to the words 'Soul is a witness.'

"Tolson is next seen bursting into a classroom, standing atop a chair—where he recites the Langston Hughes poem which begins with: 'I too sing America. I am the darker brother.'

Tolson writes 'Revolution' across the chalkboard, walks around the room and recites different parts of the Gwendolyn Bennett poem, 'Hatred,' then parts of Countee Cullen’s 'Saturday’s Child.'

"The parts of the three poems taken together firmly ground the movie.

"While the movie is about Tolson’s debaters and the history of the Wiley College debate team, it is equally about the struggle against national oppression, for Black liberation, and it is absolutely about class solidarity—such is the great debate, of the oppressed against the oppressor, the identity of each and the struggle of one against the other. ...

—Excerpted from a WW movie review by Larry Hales.

DVD, special features, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC, Widescreen, 124 minutes

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