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Gordon Parks — Part 1 TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Beginning tonight, and concluding next Tuesday evening, Turner Classic Movies will honor renowned filmmaker and photographer Gordon Parks. “I chose my camera as a weapon against all the things I dislike about America — poverty, racism,
discrimination,” Parks said. Whether it was with his still camera as a photojournalist, or with a motion-picture camera as a
moviemaker and documentarian, he was true to his word: From the 1940s through the ’70s, his various works offered searing insights into the Black experience in America. On the popular movie front, Parks became the first Black filmmaker to produce and direct a major motion picture in Hollywood, and he created what was to be known as the popular “blaxploitation” genre of the ’70s with films like 1971’s Shaft. Tonight’s celebration of Parks on TCM begins with the network premiere of the 1973 documentary Listen to a Stranger: An Interview With Gordon Parks, an in-depth interview with Parks where he discusses his life and career. This is followed by Parks’ 1964 documentary short Flavio, which follows Flavio da Silva,
a 12-year-old boy in a family of 10 living in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. After that is the 1969 drama The Learning Tree (pictured), written and directed by Parks and based on his semiautobiographical
1963 novel of the same name. It was the first film directed by an African American for a major film studio, and was selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1989 for its significance. After that is the iconic, Oscarwinning Shaft, the influential crime drama with which Parks is most associated as a director. With a dynamic performance by Richard Roundtree as the title character, private detective John Shaft, the film is fun and action-filled while still speaking to the themes that were important to Parks. In 2000, Shaft was also added to the National Film Registry. Its 1972 follow-up, Shaft’s Big Score!, directed by and with music from Parks, concludes this first evening devoted to him.