Legacy
2000 · Documentary · 90 min. · United States
LEGACY is the unflinching chronicle of one family’s triumphant journey out of povery and despair. Touchingly narrated by Nickcole Collins, a teenage girl wise beyond her years, the film follows the Collins family over five years as they slowly pull themselves out of a haze of poverty, drug addiction, and violence that plagues their public housing project in Chicago. Stereotype-busting and open-minded, LEGACY paints the American Dream in honest colors to rousing effect. Improbably, the senseless killing of 14-year-old Terrell, a straight-A student and role model for the neighborhood, spurs the family to seek a better life against impossible odds. Nickcole’s mother, a high school dropout, moves in fits and starts to find a meaningful job. Aunt Wanda, mother of Terrell and longtime crack addict, enrolls herself in a drug treatment program. Nickcole catapults herself out of the inner-city trap to a college degree and a comfortable life. It’s impossible not to cheer for these incredible real-life people as they cry and laugh, stumble and get back up again on their way to something better. In LEGACY, award-winning filmmaker Tod Lending does that rarest of things--he gives voice to the voiceless. The result is a stirring, must-see film that is "inspirational in the best sense of the term" (Variety). DVD Features: Trailer; Filmmaker Interview; Collins Family Update; Deleted Scene: Interview with O’Brian McGee; Filmmaker Biography; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection
Direction Tod Lending
Soundtrack Sheldon Mirowitz
Screenplay Tod Lending
Cinematography Slawomir Grunberg · Therese Sherman
Original title Legacy
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Not rated (FilmAffinity)
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