Two by Two: Breakthrough and follow-up films by Black directors Charles Burnett and Kasi Lemmons

In the 1990s African-American Cinema flourished in the wake of directors such as Spike Lee and John Singleton, filmmakers whose work reflected an urban and often aggressive outlook. However, two accomplished Black cineastes, Charles Burnett and Kasi Lemmons, made breakthrough films in the 1990s that suggested an original and less rhetorical direction for African-American Cinema. Two of their films, Burnett's To Sleep With Anger and Lemmons' Eve's Bayou, have become established landmarks. To celebrate African Heritage we revisit these two new classics, and take a look at recent follow-up films by the same directors to see how this promising aspect of Black Cinema is developing.

1 February: To Sleep With Anger. Charles Burnett, USA, 1990, 105 minutes. Danny Glover stars in this intense drama about a friend from the Old South who comes to stay with a middle-class African-American family in Los Angeles. Soon the ways of the Black rural past intrude upon the Black urban present, with unexpected results.

8 February: Warming By the Devil's Fire. Charles Burnett, USA, 2003, 120 minutes. The only film of Martin Scorsese's series The Blues made by a Black director, Warming by the Devil's Fire follows a young man as he is sent from the city back to his rural roots, where, through the Blues, he becomes immersed in a culture of which he was previously unaware.

15 February: Eve's Bayou. Kasi Lemmons, USA, 1997, 109 minutes. Samuel L. Jackson stars in this Southern Gothic drama about a philandering doctor and his possibly psychic young daughter. Shot in a dreamy, atmospheric style, Eve's Bayou is a poetic and moving story of a child's confrontation with reality.

23 February: The Caveman's Valentine. Kasi Lemmons, USA, 2001, 105 minutes. Samuel L. Jackson again stars, this time in Lemmons' first big-budget studio drama. This mysterious, heavily stylized and startlingly cinematic story is about a classically-trained pianist who has become homeless on the streets of New York.