Coming Through Hard Times

"Sassy wrigglin;" that's how one woman in her 90's (with a delightfully mischievous smile) recalls her dancing days as a young girl growing up in south central Texas. It's one of the more pleasant memories in filmmaker Patsy Cravens' "oral history video," a documentary that grew out of several years of talking with elderly black and white residents about their lives and times...which were mostly hard. "You couldn't make any money no kind of way," recalls one interviewee, and several people speak about the difficulties (and injustices) of the sharecropping system that essentially turned "freed" blacks into indentured servants working on land that was their own in name only. The lack of educational opportunities, strong religious and family ties, and the specter of racism; these are the themes that link these disparate stories. Near the close, one man says "the life you live will speak for you;" it's nice that Cravens has captured some of the particulars of these lives so that they may speak to more of us. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (R. Pitman)