Film
A Raisin in the Sun
- 9:30PM
Based on Lorraine Hansberry’s classic play—the first ever by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway—A Raisin in the Sun tells the moving story of the Younger clan, an African American family on the South Side of Chicago who battle the world and each other as they try to move up in the world. Sidney Poitier—one of the most important Method actors of his generation—plays Walter Younger a man whose longing for a better life leads him to conflict with his mother Lena (Dee) over his inheritance, while his sister Beneatha (future Actors Studio member Diana Sands) must choose between the wealthy George Morrison (Method actor Lou Gossett Junior in his first film role) and Joseph Asagai (Dixon), a Nigerian student who wants her to move with him to Africa. One of the great plays of the 20th century and a mainstay of English curricula and acting classes all over the world, A Raisin in the Sun comes to vibrant life on the screen in a movie that helped shatter the limits of what Black actors could do in a Hollywood film.
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