I'm extremely pleased to discover that Michael Roemer's superb debut feature, NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964), a Civil Rights-era meditation on black culture and the cauldron of race relations in that flashpoint moment, will be released in the Criterion collection this coming February.

The film stars Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Julius Harris and Gloria Foster, and is much more neo-realist than noir, but hits hard at the culture of defeat that permeated the Deep South in the latter days of full-on segregation.

Two years ago, the film was languishing in obscurity when we presented it along with Roger Corman's THE INTRUDER as one of our April 2022 double features in the MIDCENTURY MADNESS series. While I don't for a moment mean to suggest that our efforts had any direct influence on this turn of events, it is extremely gratifying to see that the film is at last being put back on the map, and being given some well-deserved recognition for the landmark achievement that it is.

Please make a note of it and strongly consider purchasing it when it becomes available early next year...