Jim Hemphill's Home Video Recommendations: Lady Sings the Blues, Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, The Bureau: The Complete Series

When Motown Records impresario Berry Gordy made his debut as a filmmaker in 1972, the dominant mode in Black cinema was that of Blaxploitation flicks like Shaft and Superfly or gritty indies like Melvin Van Peebles' politically and formally radical Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Gordy saw a void to be filled--and an opportunity to showcase his label's biggest star, Diana Ross--by producing a glossy, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama with Black performers; the result, the Billie Holiday biopi...