The City Lost and Found Film Series presents

The Cool World (1963)

The Cool World was the first commercial film venture to be shot on location in Harlem and one of director Shirley Clarke's few mainstream projects. Hampton Clayton plays Duke, a powerful street gang member who claims that he is motivated by the Black Muslim movement. His subsequent criminal activities are thus not merely for gain, but as a means to declare black supremacy over the white establishment. (The New York Times)

The Cool World will screen with Diary of a Harlem Family (1968) a short film based on Gordon Parks’ iconic photo essay of Harlem.

Discussant
Josh Guild, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies

The City Lost and Found Film Series is organized by the Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities, the Program in Urban Studies, and the Princeton University Art Museum in conjunction with the exhibition, The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960–1980. Diary of a Harlem Family is presented with support from The Gordon Parks Foundation.