Series/Themes: Featured, Music, Special Guests, Spotlight Screenings, Staff Picks

Genre: Classics

Film Year: 1971

Locations: USA

Film Length: 100 min.

Director: Gordon Parks

Featuring: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi

Richard Roundtree’s iconic, gritty performance as self-reliant private detective John Shaft continues to resonate decades later. When the police pump Shaft for information on something big going down in Harlem involving black crime kingpin Bumpy Jonas, he gets strong-armed into the action after thwarting an attempt on his life. Bumpy contracts Shaft to find his kidnapped daughter, forcing him to rough-up his onetime friend and leader of Harlem-based black militants, but he finds himself teaming up with both to save her from the white mafia. With audacious yet calculated violence, director Gordon Parks’ seminal action film fully inhabits the private-eye genre, and confronts race relations in palpable terms. Discussion with actor Richard Roundtree and John Mason

Supported by the Library of Congress, U.Va. Office for Diversity and Equity, and The Fralin Museum of Art