Black Girl

Billie Jean is seventeen. She wants to be a dancer. To pay for it she needs money. She dances at a bar in the neighbourhood. Tips are what she lives on. Her mother, Mama Rosie, works as a cleaner. Two older sisters live in the house. So does the grandmother. There is one more person, a young woman named Netta. The family raised her, she went on to study and she left home. When she comes back the balance in the house gives way, and the sisters cannot bear the love their mother has for her. The film is drawn from J. E. Franklin’s play of 1969. Leslie Uggams, Claudia McNeil, Peggy Pettit and Brock Peters appear in the ninety seven minute film, an American production Ossie Davis finished in 1972.