alr

Cleopatra Jones

Screening on Film
Directed by Jack Starrett.
With Tamara Dobson, Bernie Casey, Shelley Winters.
US, 1973, 35mm, color, 89 min.

Cutting a striking figure across a dramatic mountain landscape, Special Agent Cleopatra Jones, clad in a long black cape and fur bonnet, watches fields of poppies burn. Less emotional, naked and raw than the Pam Grier cycle, Cleopatra Jones presents a glossier 007-style action heroine who maintains her cool and keeps her ever-changing outfits securely fastened. Like Grier, former model Tamara Dobson changes the action movie game with her beauty, brains and physical prowess. She too is up against crooked cops, double-crossing brethren and “Mommy,” Shelley Winters’ kitschy dominatrix who attempts to control the city through drugs and violence. Yet Jones is a sophisticated martial artist and a professional protector of her community. The vengeful blasts of Foxy and Coffy are desperate, enraged shouts compared to the slick choreography of the semi-futuristic Cleo, who drives a Batmobile-like Corvette complete with a car phone and an arsenal of automatic weapons hidden in the door.

Part of film series

Read more

Say It Loud!
The Black Cinema Revolution

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

Chile Año Cero / Chile Year Zero

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema