Hour Glass

Haile Gerima’s first film during his UCLA studies depicts the growing awareness of racism and exploitation of a young black basketball player: America is a prison whose bars must be forced open. The Last Poets group raps out “Time Is Running Out” and Elaine Brown, president of the Black Panther Party from 1974 to 1977, sings “Seize the Time”.

Haile Gerima, born in Ethiopia in 1946, studied in Chicago then at UCLA before settling in Washington to follow a rich career as an internationally recognised filmmaker, between the United States and Ethiopia, along with intensive teaching, producing and distributing. During his stay in Los Angeles and at ULCA, he made Child of Resistance (1972), Harvest: 3,000 Years (1976) and his thesis film Bush Mama (1976), followed by Wilmington 10, USA 10,000 (1978), Ashes and Embers (1982), Sankofa (1993) and Teza (2008), among others.