Black Girl

Actor and activist Ossie Davis’s third feature as director, adapted from J. E. Franklin’s popular off-Broadway play, stars Peggy Pettitt as Billie Jean, a misunderstood young Black woman attempting to build a new life by becoming a dancer. Billie Jean lives with her janitor mom, Mama Rosie (Louise Stubbs), along with her older half-sisters, their children, her grandmother, and her grandmother’s boyfriend. The stellar cast, including Claudia McNeil, Brock Peters, and Davis’s wife Ruby Dee, dig deep in every scene, creating a fiercely honest world and a poignant intergenerational portrait that captures the personal effects and rooted realities of poverty. Pettitt, a lifelong teacher working in experimental theater and bringing her skills to prisons, drug treatment centers, homeless shelters, and more, was nominated for Best Actress by the NAACP for this, her one and only screen performance. The textures and colors of this moving social drama are especially vibrant on the newly restored 35mm print, cementing Black Girl’s legacy as a vital and prescient meditation on Black femininity and the ties that bind.  

Restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.