Free At Last! Free At Last!

Subtitled "A Black Family Memoir of the Post Civil War Period," Free At Last! Free At Last! tells the story of the Battle family from the days of slavery to the present. The on-camera tale tellers are Alvin Battle and his grandson Na'im, and they are filmed at the Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, MD. While the family history itself is often interesting, the program suffers from a real lack of focus: part of the program tells the story of the Battle family; the other part tries to encompass the history of black Americans in about a half hour (a futile task). Too, neither Alvin Battle nor his grandson are used to being in front of a camera, and as they read their script from an off-camera teleprompter word-for-word, that is exactly how it sounds to the viewer: a monotone reading. Finally, although generally comprehensible, the script sometimes contains phrases which don't make a lot of sense (i.e., on the end of the Civil War: "And even in the groaning of Southern defeat, a new elephant was lifting its head.") As Mr. Battle and his grandson move through the museum standing in front of the wax figures of such legends as Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, and others, one can appreciate with the idea of passing one's cultural heritage down through the generations. It's just that the poor production values clash with the well-meaning aspect of the program. Not recommended. (Available from: Video Ed Productions, Inc., 4301 East-West Hwy, Hyattsville, MD 20782; (800) 635-2853.)