Barbara O. Jones, an actress in the independent Black cinema of 1970s Los Angeles in such films as Bush Mama and Daughters of the Dust, has died at her home in Dayton, Ohio. She was 82.
Her brother, Marlon Minor, confirmed her April 8 death to The New York Times and said the cause had not been determined.
Jones moved from the Midwest in search of a film career, and became active in the UCLA film school, a movement that has been called the L.A. Rebellion.
She appeared in several short student films, including Child of Resistance (1973), in which she played an imprisoned activist loosely based on Angela Davis, and Diary of an African Nun (1977), adapted from a short story by Alice Walker.
Her first leading role in a feature film was in Bush Mama (1979). The movie’s story followed the daily life of Dorothy, played by Jones. The film was...
Her brother, Marlon Minor, confirmed her April 8 death to The New York Times and said the cause had not been determined.
Jones moved from the Midwest in search of a film career, and became active in the UCLA film school, a movement that has been called the L.A. Rebellion.
She appeared in several short student films, including Child of Resistance (1973), in which she played an imprisoned activist loosely based on Angela Davis, and Diary of an African Nun (1977), adapted from a short story by Alice Walker.
Her first leading role in a feature film was in Bush Mama (1979). The movie’s story followed the daily life of Dorothy, played by Jones. The film was...
- 5/5/2024
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Barbara O. Jones, the admired actress who emerged from the L.A. Rebellion movement of Black filmmakers at UCLA in the 1970s to star in Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, has died. She was 82.
Jones died Tuesday at her home in Dayton, Ohio, her brother, Raymond Minor, told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Rest In Peace & Power,” Dash wrote on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Julie Dash (@dash_julie)
For Gerima, Jones portrayed an imprisoned woman fighting for social justice in the 36-minute short film Child of Resistance (1973) — the character was inspired by activist Angela Davis — and a welfare recipient in Watts who undergoes an ideological transformation in the filmmaker’s feature debut, Bush Mama (1979). Both films were made at UCLA.
Jones starred as a Ugandan nun questioning her faith in Dash’s 13-minute student film Diary of an...
Jones died Tuesday at her home in Dayton, Ohio, her brother, Raymond Minor, told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Rest In Peace & Power,” Dash wrote on Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Julie Dash (@dash_julie)
For Gerima, Jones portrayed an imprisoned woman fighting for social justice in the 36-minute short film Child of Resistance (1973) — the character was inspired by activist Angela Davis — and a welfare recipient in Watts who undergoes an ideological transformation in the filmmaker’s feature debut, Bush Mama (1979). Both films were made at UCLA.
Jones starred as a Ugandan nun questioning her faith in Dash’s 13-minute student film Diary of an...
- 4/18/2024
- by Mike Barnes
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Do you see her? The Black mother wiping her son’s inner eye on a Harlem corner? It’s the late ’90s and she’s piecing her life back together after a prison stint. What about the mother positioning an infant for a photo? She works at a studio, tucked in a Bay Area mall, trying to make ends meet before the birth of her third child. Or the Black mother lounging in her living room during a party? Guests, drunk on liquor and a good time, buzz around her as a young girl plays at her feet.
These women are the central figures of three revelatory dramas released this year. In A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama and Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which opens in limited release Nov. 3, Black mothers assume more complex roles than the ones Hollywood usually affords them.
These women are the central figures of three revelatory dramas released this year. In A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama and Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which opens in limited release Nov. 3, Black mothers assume more complex roles than the ones Hollywood usually affords them.
- 11/1/2023
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Distribution of Maangamizi at local video stall. Photo courtesy of Ajabu Ajabu.It's July, in the middle of Europe's heatwave summer. London is bursting with life. A cacophony from the people scurrying through the capital's streets seeps through the walls as I sit in the basement at Close-Up Film Center—a small cinema and film library in Shoreditch—with Darragh Amelia. She is one half of the duo at the helm of Ajabu Ajabu, the Tanzania-based collective of arts professionals pushing for visibility and increased access for the country's experimental film scene. Co-founder Jesse Gerard Mpango later described this cinematic landscape during a video interview as mutable, stating, “though some practitioners are creating experimental works, the majority of filmmakers in Tanzania do not view experimentation as an approach in and of itself, but rather experiment out of necessity.” Through screenings and workshops, Ajabu Ajabu aims to unite these works that...
- 10/10/2022
- MUBI
Kaleidoscope to release film about Sgt. Pepper album.
Kaleidoscope Entertainment will release Beatles documentary It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…Sgt Pepper & Beyond in the UK from late May.
The film examines why the band stopped touring in the mid 1960s, how their iconic Sgt Pepper album was conceived and its recording at Emi’s Abbey Road Studios.
It will feature archival footage and interviews with The Beatles’ original drummer Pete Best, John Lennon’s sister Julia Baird, Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s secretary Barbara O’Donnell, Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks and Beatles associate Tony Bramwell, among others.
Alan G. Parker (Monty Python: Almost The Truth) directs. Producers are Reynold D’Silva and Alexa Morris.
The film will not include original music from the group but has a score composed by Andre Barreau (Sliding Doors) and Evan Jolly (co-composer Hacksaw Ridge) and features music from tribute band The Bootleg Beatles, which has existed...
Kaleidoscope Entertainment will release Beatles documentary It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…Sgt Pepper & Beyond in the UK from late May.
The film examines why the band stopped touring in the mid 1960s, how their iconic Sgt Pepper album was conceived and its recording at Emi’s Abbey Road Studios.
It will feature archival footage and interviews with The Beatles’ original drummer Pete Best, John Lennon’s sister Julia Baird, Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s secretary Barbara O’Donnell, Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks and Beatles associate Tony Bramwell, among others.
Alan G. Parker (Monty Python: Almost The Truth) directs. Producers are Reynold D’Silva and Alexa Morris.
The film will not include original music from the group but has a score composed by Andre Barreau (Sliding Doors) and Evan Jolly (co-composer Hacksaw Ridge) and features music from tribute band The Bootleg Beatles, which has existed...
- 4/5/2017
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
Chicago – Iconic and historical are the two apt terms for a film directed by an African American woman, the first to be distributed theatrically, Was it the 1920s? 1940s? It had to be the 1970s. No, it was 1992 when that barrier was broken, with the film “Daughters in the Dust,” directed by Julie Dash.
“Daughters of the Dust” is a lyrical cinematic poem about transition and pride. In the early 20th Century, the children of slaves were making their first movements from the South during “The Great Migration” – when African Americans sought more independence in the industrial North. “Daughters” highlights the residents of St. Simons Island in Georgia, a settlement for a freed family named Peazant – who practiced Creole “Gullah” ancestry, which observed African tribal traditions during their time in America. The older and more established residents are wary of the traveling ways of the new generation, and the presence...
“Daughters of the Dust” is a lyrical cinematic poem about transition and pride. In the early 20th Century, the children of slaves were making their first movements from the South during “The Great Migration” – when African Americans sought more independence in the industrial North. “Daughters” highlights the residents of St. Simons Island in Georgia, a settlement for a freed family named Peazant – who practiced Creole “Gullah” ancestry, which observed African tribal traditions during their time in America. The older and more established residents are wary of the traveling ways of the new generation, and the presence...
- 11/29/2016
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
2Nd Update: : International actuals are in from most of the studios with a few figure shifts. The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies came in higher than projected with a total $54M weekend and a cume of $504.65M. Disney’s Into The Woods, previously at a projected $1M for the weekend, nearly doubled that to take a confirmed $1.7M. In Italy, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was above its estimated record-breaking haul with $7.1M on 425 screens and the best per-screen average in the market. There’s also a new local movie record in fast-growing Vietnam — see the key market round-ups below for more on that one.
Figures have been updated throughout for The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies, Exodus: Gods And Kings, Penguins Of Madagascar, Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb, Big Hero 6, Into The Woods, Seventh Son, Taken 3, American Sniper, The Water Diviner,...
Figures have been updated throughout for The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies, Exodus: Gods And Kings, Penguins Of Madagascar, Night At The Museum: Secret Of The Tomb, Big Hero 6, Into The Woods, Seventh Son, Taken 3, American Sniper, The Water Diviner,...
- 1/6/2015
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline
‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Alicia Rhett dead at 98; was oldest surviving credited Gwtw cast member Gone with the Wind actress Alicia Rhett, the oldest surviving credited cast member of the 1939 Oscar-winning blockbuster, died on January 3, 2014, at the Bishop Gadsden Episcopal Retirement Community in Charleston, South Carolina, where Rhett had been living since August 2002. Alicia Rhett, born on February 1, 1915, in Savannah, Georgia, was 98. (Photo: Alicia Rhett as India Wilkes in Gone with the Wind.) In Gone with the Wind, the David O. Selznick production made in conjunction with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM head Louis B. Mayer was Selznick’s father-in-law), the stage-trained Alicia Rhett played India Wilkes, the embittered sister of Ashley Wilkes, whom Scarlett O’Hara loves — though Ashley eventually marries Melanie Hamilton (Rhett had auditioned for the role), while Scarlett ends up with Rhett Butler. Based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller, Gone with the Wind was (mostly) directed by Victor Fleming...
- 1/5/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Hattie McDaniel as Mammy in ‘Gone with the Wind’: TCM schedule on August 20, 2013 (photo: Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in ‘Gone with the Wind’) See previous post: “Hattie McDaniel: Oscar Winner Makes History.” 3:00 Am Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). Director: David Butler. Cast: Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Eddie Cantor, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, John Garfield, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, George Tobias, Edward Everett Horton, S.Z. Sakall, Hattie McDaniel, Ruth Donnelly, Don Wilson, Spike Jones, Henry Armetta, Leah Baird, Willie Best, Monte Blue, James Burke, David Butler, Stanley Clements, William Desmond, Ralph Dunn, Frank Faylen, James Flavin, Creighton Hale, Sam Harris, Paul Harvey, Mark Hellinger, Brandon Hurst, Charles Irwin, Noble Johnson, Mike Mazurki, Fred Kelsey, Frank Mayo, Joyce Reynolds, Mary Treen, Doodles Weaver. Bw-127 mins. 5:15 Am Janie (1944). Director: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Joyce Reynolds, Robert Hutton,...
- 8/21/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The fourth in the ongoing series of the Chicago screenings of the L.A. Rebellion touring film series will continue on Thursday May 9 with a screening of Haile Gerima’s powerful 1979 film Bush Mama. The film, which stars Barbara O. Jones, was made by Gerima (Sankofa, Teza, Adwa) as his thesis project when he was a graduate film student at UCLA; one of the cinematographers on the project was future film director Charles Burnett, whose film, My Brother’s Wedding, was screened last week. The film deals with a young wife who increasingly becomes radicalized by the obstacles she faces when her Army veteran husband is arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. The film...
- 5/6/2013
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
Gone With The Wind Actress Ann Rutherford Dies. [Photo: Ann Rutherford as Carreen O'Hara, Evelyn Keyes as Suellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.]
Ann Rutherford‘s most notable screen roles were in films made away from both MGM and Wallace Beery. She was a young woman who falls for trumpeter George Montgomery in Archie Mayo’s 20th Century Fox musical Orchestra Wives (1942), and became enmeshed with (possibly) amnesiac Tom Conway in Anthony Mann’s Rko thriller Two O’Clock Courage (1945).
Following a couple of minor supporting roles — in the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) at Goldwyn and the Errol Flynn costumer The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) at Warner Bros. — and the female lead in the independently made cattle drama Operation Haylift (1950), opposite Bill Williams, Ann Rutherford retired from the screen. (Rutherford would later say that her Operation Haylift experience was anything but pleasant.)
She then turned to television, making regular television appearances in the ’50s (The Donna Reed Show, Playhouse 90,...
Ann Rutherford‘s most notable screen roles were in films made away from both MGM and Wallace Beery. She was a young woman who falls for trumpeter George Montgomery in Archie Mayo’s 20th Century Fox musical Orchestra Wives (1942), and became enmeshed with (possibly) amnesiac Tom Conway in Anthony Mann’s Rko thriller Two O’Clock Courage (1945).
Following a couple of minor supporting roles — in the Danny Kaye comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) at Goldwyn and the Errol Flynn costumer The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) at Warner Bros. — and the female lead in the independently made cattle drama Operation Haylift (1950), opposite Bill Williams, Ann Rutherford retired from the screen. (Rutherford would later say that her Operation Haylift experience was anything but pleasant.)
She then turned to television, making regular television appearances in the ’50s (The Donna Reed Show, Playhouse 90,...
- 6/12/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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