Entertainment
Sidney Poitier International Conference and Film Festival
Feb 24, 2010 - 12:57:03 PM

            LILIES OF THE FIELD (1963)  (SCHOOLS ONLY SCREENING)

An itinerant handyman finds himself working in the service of five nuns in the Arizona desert.   His job: build the nuns a chapel.   His pay: the satisfaction of knowing he did a good deed.   Is he happy about it?   Not exactly.   (94 min)

6PM-ELDON BUILDING

EDGE OF THE CITY (1957)   1^st Floor

Two dockside laborers, (Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes) face corruption on the New York waterfront and share a bond cutting across society's black/white divide in this gritty drama. (85 min)

SOMETHING OF VALUE (1957)   3^rd Floor

A drama that focuses on the racial tensions and violence in Kenya during the Mau Mau Rebellion. Sidney Poitier stars as Kimani, the boyhood friend of the white colonist Peter, played by Rock Hudson.   Will their friendship survive the struggle for equality and independence? (113 min)

8PM –ELDON BUILDING                 

BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955)        1^st Floor   

PRESSURE POINT (1962)        3^rd Floor

Sidney Poitier plays a prison psychiatrist trying to get through to a violent pro-Nazi inmate (Bobby Darin).   This inventive film takes   us into the psyche of an abused child turn psychopath.    (91 min)

11AM-PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE

           TO SIR, WITH LOVE (1967)    (SCHOOLS ONLY SCREENING)

Long before Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland's Opus or Freedom Writers there was To Sir with Love.  Sidney Poitier plays Mr. Thackery, a Guyanese engineer who becomes the mentor of a band of rude working class adolescents in a London school. (105 min)

6PM-ELDON BUILDING

PARIS BLUES (1961)        1^st Floor

Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier play America jazz men in Paris who become romantically involved with a pair of tourists. Soon both relationships take a serious turn and the musicians are forced to make some important decisions about the possibility of returning to their native soil. (98 min)

FOR THE LOVE OF IVY (1968)       3^rd Floor

When high-rolling hustler Jack Parks (Poitier) is blackmailed into seducing a client's naive young housekeeper, love is the last thing on his mind. But Jack has never met anyone like Ivy Moore (Abbey Lincoln) and now he's really beginning to care for her just as she discovers the truth! (101 min)

8PM –ELDON BUILDING

A PATCH OF BLUE (1965)   1^st Floor

A friendly stranger befriends a blind girl who lives with an abusive mother (Shelley Winters in an Oscar winning performance).   With his help she learns self reliance and experiences a happiness she’s never known.   But she is white and he is black. (105 min)

            GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967)    3^rd Floor

State bans on interracial marriage were finally overturned by the Supreme Court in the very year Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn appeared in this movie classic.   Hepburn won Best Actress for her role as the well to do mother of a young white woman who falls in love with Dr. John Wade Prentice, (Poitier), and brings him home to meet her parents.   (108 minutes)

11AM-PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE

A RAISIN IN THE SUN  (1961)      (SCHOOLS ONLY SCREENING)

The powerful screen adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry's fantastic Broadway play. Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee star as part of a working class African American family in Chicago who are about to come in to $10,000.   There is a struggle of wills however, over how the money ought to be spent. (128 min)

6.00PM- PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE

THE DEFIANT ONES (1958)    

Nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, The Defiant Ones tells the story of two prisoners chained together and on the run.   The problem is one is white and one is black (Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier); and they may kill each other long before they get caught by the posse and bloodhounds that is pursuing them.    (97 min)

8.00PM-PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)

One of Philadelphia’s best homicide detectives happens to be waiting for a train in a Mississippi town at the wrong time.   After being accused of murder by the town’s prejudiced white cops, Virgil Tibbs finds himself asked to be the lead investigator in the case.   This film starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, won Best Picture in 1967 and inspired a successful tv series as well as two sequels. (109 min)

1PM-ELDON BUILDING

THE LOST MAN (1969)    1^st Floor

Sidney Poitier plays Jason Higgs, former U.S. Army lieutenant turned Black Power militant.   Higgs is wounded when he pulls a payroll heist to help imprisoned "brothers" and has to hide from the police. Joanna Shimkus, (who later married Poitier) plays the social worker Cathy Ellis who falls in love with Higgs while helping him elude capture. (122 min)

BUCK AND THE PREACHER (1972)   3^rd Floor

Sidney Poitier stars and directs this western set in the post Civil War era about a black wagon train heading West through Indian country.   Pursued by a white posse, Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee come out guns a blazin’. (102 min)

3.30 PM-ELDON BUILDING

UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT (1974)     1^st Floor

Steve Jackson and Wardell Franklin sneak out of their houses to visit Madame Zenobia's: a high-class but illegal nightclub. During their visit, however, the place is robbed and they are forced to hand over their wallets. Steve's wallet turns out to have contained a winning lottery ticket, and together they must recover their stolen property. (104 min)

            A PIECE OF THE ACTION (1977)   3^rd Floor

Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and James Earl Jones star in this film about two expert thieves who are blackmailed by a retired police detective into helping juvenile delinquents at a community center lead lives as employed, law abiding, productive citizens. (135 min)

6.00 PM-ELDON BUILDING

MANDELA AND DEKLERK (1997)   1^st Floor

Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine play Nelson Mandela and President F.W. de Klerk, in a made for TV movie about the ultimate dismantling of apartheid in South Africa.   Both men were nominated for Emmy’s for their performances. (114 min)

  THE SIMPLE LIFE OF NOAH DEARBORN (1999)     3^rd Floor

In the tiny community of Twin Pines, GA, lives Noah Dearborn, a master craftsman and farmer who cherishes his solitude almost as much as the local townspeople cherish him, especially restaurateur Sarah McCellan.   When real estate developers set their sights on Noah’s land, he rejects their offer.   That’s when the trouble starts .    (85 min)

8PM-PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE

            NO WAY OUT (1950)

Sidney Poitier plays Dr. Luther Brooks, a competent young black intern who is accused of negligence in the death of a white patient.   The patient’s racist brother (played by Richard Widmark) sets out to destroy Luther at all costs.   (106 min)