Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be on Broadway and two years after its stage debut was turned into a big screen film starring original stage cast members Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee.
The film has been given a 4K digital restoration and is being released on Blu-ray this October 1st by the Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Pre-order your copy from Amazon.co.uk
Poitier and Dee star as members of a family living in a cramped Chicago apartment.
Following the death of their patriarch, the Youngers await a life insurance cheque they hope will change their circumstances, but tensions arise over how best to use the money.
Vividly rendering Hansberry’s intimate observations on generational conflict and housing discrimination, Director Daniel Petrie captures the high stakes, shifting currents, and varieties of experience within black life in mid-century America.
Special Features
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interview from 1961 with playwright and screenwriter Lorraine Hansberry
- New interview with Imani Perry, author of Looking for Lorraine, on the real-life events on which the play is based
- Episode of Theatre Talk from 2002 featuring producer Philip Rose and actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis
- Excerpt from The Black Theatre Movement: From “A Raisin in the Sun” to the Present, a 1978 documentary, with a new introduction by director Woodie King Jr.
- New interview with film scholar Mia Mask, editor of Poitier Revisited
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by scholar Sarita Cannon
