The SIDNEY POITIER TRIBUTE Continues Thursday Night with A PIECE OF THE ACTION and LET’S DO IT AGAIN

The SIDNEY POITIER TRIBUTE Continues Thursday Night with A PIECE OF THE ACTION and LET’S DO IT AGAIN

February is Black History Month, and to help celebrate, The St. Louis Black Film Festival will be presenting a Tribute to the 86-year old Sidney Poitier at their C  lassic Black Film Festival. Lucky St. Louis movie buffs will have the opportunity to view eight vintage Sidney Poitier on the big screen. Every Thursday in February, The St. Louis Black Film Festival will be presenting two Poitier films at St Louis Cinemas Galleria (630 St Louis Galleria, Richmond Heights, MO 63117).

The SIDNEY POITIER TRIBUTE Film Festival continues this Thursday night (February 27^th) with two Poitier classics; A PIECE OF THE ACTION and LET’S DO IT AGAIN

Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, co-stars of the comic capers UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT and LET’S DO IT AGAIN, teamed up again in 1975 for the socially conscious comedy-adventure A PIECE OF THE ACTION. This time out, Poitier and Cosby played Manny Durrell and Dave Anderson, Windy City con artists with a long history of cheating crooks who rip off the poor. They are blackmailed by retired cop Joshua Burke (James Earl Jones) into “giving back to the community.” Manny and Dave soon find themselves posing as career counselors for a group of surly inner-city youths at a local community center. Despite the efforts of such unruly kids as class clown Gerald (Eric Laneuville) and bitter Barbara (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Manny actually begins to take pride in the help he’s giving to his students. Soon, though, he’s forced to deal with two additional obstacles: the arrival of his girlfriend’s obnoxious parents (Gammy Burdett and Wonderful Smith) and the attentions of a local mobster (Titos Vandis) upset that he’s been had. As with his previous Cosby collaborations, Poitier directed A PIECE OF THE ACTION, whose cast also includes Denise Nicholas as a community center leader, Tracy Reed as Manny’s girlfriend, Nikki, and Ja’net DuBois as Nikki’s tipsy aunt, Nellie.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION screens at 6pm

A pair of blue-collar buddies use hypnosis to turn a wimpy boxer into a champ in the crime comedy LET’S DO IT AGAIN, which reunited actor/director Sidney Poitier and comedian Bill Cosby, stars of the similarly themed UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT. Clyde Williams (Poitier) and Billy Foster (Cosby) want to help raise funds to sustain the Sons and Daughters of Shaka Lodge, their local community group. Given that Clyde was trained as a hypnotist while in the military, the pair decide to con mobster Biggie Smalls (Calvin Lockhart) by placing a high-stakes bet on a boxing match and then using hocus-pocus to transform skinny underdog Bootney Farnsworth (Jimmie Walker) into a bruiser. When Biggie finds out about their ruse, he and his thugs move in to reclaim their money, setting the stage for further laughs and sleight-of-hand. With a supporting cast that includes Denise Nicholas and Lee Chamberlin as the protagonists’ wives and Ossie Davis as an elder at their lodge, LET’S DO IT AGAIN also reunited Good Times stars Walker and John Amos to the silver screen. Cosby and Poitier would return two years later with A Piece of the Action, though Lockhart, another veteran of UPTOWN SATURDAY NIGHT, would sit out the final team-up. Hip-hop fans will note that Lockhart’s character provided one of the aliases for slain ’90s rap star Christopher Wallace, also known as the Notorious B.I.G. The soundtrack for Let’s Do It Again featured Curtis Mayfield songs performed by the the Staple Singers.

LET’S DO IT AGAIN screens at 6pm

Admission is free with AARP membership card, otherwise $10 for each movie.

There will also be a “Social Happy Hour” from 4-6 before each movie.

For more info or to participate go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/St-Louis-Black-Film-Festival/179694092087006

For more information please contact James Thomas at email: jamesthemovieman@gmail.com