EPiSODE 97.

The great Bill Duke, immortalized onscreen for his roles in Car Wash, Predator, Action Jackson, The Limey and Mandy, also boasts a distinctive five-decade career directing film and television. On this episode, hosts Christopher Funderburg and John Cribbs welcome back Pinnland Empire guru Marcus Pinn to discuss Duke's 1984 feature debut, The Killing Floor. After premiering on the PBS American Playhouse series, winning the Special Jury Prize at Sundance and being chosen as an Official Selection of the "La Semaine de la Critique" section at Cannes, the movie practically disappeared from sight until its recent 4k restoration and preservation by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Set during a period of migration of Southern black workers to the giant Chicago slaughterhouses during the first World War, The Killing Floor concerns the struggle to build an interracial union even as meatpacking management actively plotted to divide the workface along ethnic lines, a conflict which boiled over in the race riots of 1919. Featuring early performances from Alfre Woodard and Dennis Farina, an exhaustively researched screenplay by Leslie Lee (from a story by producer Elsa Rassbach) and assured direction from Duke, it's a film that deserves more recognition for both its subject matter and its own time and place in American filmmaking.

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