In the Heat of the Night

In-person: Live dramatic reading of an excerpt of The Devil Finds Work (1976) by writer-director Raven Jackson, actor Mark Antony Howard, and actor Kendale Winbush (UCLA Theater M.F.A. ’21) with Q&A to follow.

This program is presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series The Devil Finds Work: James Baldwin’s Cinema of the Mind.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Winner of five Academy Awards including Best Picture, this racially charged noir stars Sidney Poitier as Virgil Tibbs, a Black detective drawn into a murder investigation in a racially hostile Mississippi town. The film made history with “the slap” — a moment of defiance when Tibbs strikes back at a white plantation owner murder suspect. James Baldwin praised Poitier’s dignity, while critiquing the film’s liberal fantasy of white awakening and redemption.

DCP, color, 110 min. Director: Norman Jewison. Screenwriter: Stirling Silliphant. With: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates.