The Criterion Collection, a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films presents Leadbelly.
In his final theatrical film, celebrated director Gordon Parks cast Roger E. Mosley as the iconic blues and folk singer Huddie Ledbetter, better known to music history as Lead Belly, the King of the 12-String Guitar. Dramatizing the musician’s turbulent life from his early 20s to his mid-40s, Leadbelly follows Huddie as he performs at bars and sukey jumps, learns the blues from “Blind Lemon” Jefferson, faces violent racism and its deadly consequences, and twice finds himself incarcerated, labouring on back-breaking chain gangs and performing at the behest of white authorities. Combining pastoral simplicity with the resilient and rebellious spirit of the 1970s, all to the sounds of Lead Belly’s iconic songs, Leadbelly offers a vibrant and harrowing portrait of the segregated Jim Crow South and stood as the film Parks most admired amongst his own filmography.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with filmmaker Spike Lee and music historians Kip Lornell and Charles Wolfe
- March of Time newsreel on Lead Belly
- Three Songs by Leadbelly, Blanding Shaw and Wah Mong Chang’s 1945 footage edited together two decades later by folk singer Pete Seeger
- Legend of Lead Belly, Alan Ravenscroft 52-minute documentary on the folk singer
- Selected performances from A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly
- Archival interview with folklorist Alan Lomax
- Theatrical trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: A new essay by scholar L. Roi Boyd III and novelist Richard Wright’s 1937 tribute to Lead Belly written for the Daily Worker
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