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3 articles from 2006

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Hayes Welcomes Fourth Child

18 May 2006 | WENN | See recent WENN news »

Soul singer Isaac Hayes is celebrating after his wife Adjowa gave birth to their first child together. The Shaft hitmaker's wife gave birth to an 8 pounds, 5 ounce son named Nana Kwadjo Hayes on April 10, but they only released the information yesterday. The Scientologist star, who quit as the voice of Chef in South Park earlier this year, has three other sons from previous marriages. Hayes and Adjowa married in May 2005. »

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Pioneer Black Director Gordon Parks Dead at 93

8 March 2006 | Studio Briefing - Film News | See recent Studio Briefing - Film News news »

Gordon Parks, a news photographer who became the first major black movie director, died Tuesday in New York at the age of 93. Parks was also a composer and an author of fiction, including The Learning Tree, which he turned into his first movie in 1969. He also was credited with launching the wave of blaxploitation films in the early '70s with the detective drama Shaft. Prior to his film career, he worked for Life magazine as a photographer for 20 years, often capturing the face of poverty in America and the struggles of the civil rights movement. Only three weeks before his death Parks was awarded one of journalism's highest honors, the William Allen White Foundation National Citation from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. In a taped interview with CBS correspondent Byron Pitts, Parks, who said that his doctor wouldn't allow him to attend the ceremonies in person, remarked that he wanted to be buried in the eastern Kansas town of Fort Scott, where he grew up. "That is my home, and that is what I want to go back to," he said. »

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Filmmaker Gordon Parks Dies at 93

8 March 2006 | WENN | See recent WENN news »

Gordon Parks, who became a pioneering and influential force in African-American cinema with the films The Learning Tree and Shaft, died on Tuesday in New York; he was 93. Born in Kansas, Parks was orphaned at 15 and grew up homeless, taking jobs wherever he could before becoming interested in photography in the 1930s, working several government jobs during World War II. He ultimately joined Life magazine in the late 40s as the publication's first African-American photographer, and his worked ranged from celebrity shoots to photo essays chronicling the effects of poverty, segregation, and crime. In the 60s, his work covering the Black Power movement and a poverty-stricken family in Rio de Janiero became some of his most notable, with a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel, The Learning Tree, also published early in the decade. With encouragement from John Cassavettes, Parks became the first African-American filmmaker to helm a major studio film with his 1969 adaptation of The Learning Tree, which was among the first 25 films to be preserved in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. His second film, the groundbreaking cult classic Shaft (1971), was a resounding commercial success, and despite Parks' protestations that the movie was not meant to be exploitative, helped launch the "blaxploitation" movement of the 70s. Parks went on to direct Shaft's Big Score, The Super Cops, and Leadbelly in the 70s; his son, Gordon Parks Jr. (who died in a plane crash in 1979), directed another cult classic, Superfly. Photography and filmmaking were just two of Parks' accomplishments, as he also wrote novels, memoirs, poetry and music, receiving a National Medal of Arts, and was the co-founder of Essence magazine. Married and divorced three times, Parks is survived by a son, two daughters, and several grandchildren. --Prepared by IMDb staff »

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2006 | 2001 | 2000 | 1998 | 1997

3 articles from 2006

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