Higher Learning

Higher Learning

Synopsis

Race and sex bubble up in this college-based drama from Boyz N The Hood director John Singleton

About

After Boyz N the Hood (1991) and Poetic Justice (1993), writer-director Singleton shifted his attention from the ghetto to America's embattled universities and their struggle with multiculturalism.

Higher Learning enrols three new students (Epps, Swanson and Rapaport) at the fictional Columbus University and watches them evolve under the pressures of outside forces: black and white militancy, feminism and their new-found liberty.

The film lapses into polarized melodrama but it's a handsome piece, displaying a fair understanding of our desperate need to belong.

Cast & Connections

Actor: Ice Cube, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Rapaport, Omar Epps, Kristy Swanson, Jennifer Connelly
Director: John Singleton
Writer: John Singleton
Producer: Paul Hall, John Singleton
Photographer: Peter Lyons Collister
Composer: Stanley Clarke

In a nutshell

Ice Cube puts in another bristling performance for Singleton as a sloganeering brother, and Laurence Fishburne adds further quality as Epps's wise tutor.

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