Cooley High (The Criterion Collection) 06/23 Blu-ray (Rental)

Chicago, 1964: it’s the last weeks of high school for aspiring poet Preach (Glynn Turman) and his best friend, Cochise (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), and they have a full slate of extracurricular activities: swinging dance parties, late-night joyrides, and the stumbling pursuit of romance. Of course, when you’re a young Black man in America, your coming-of-age story is far from complication-free. With Cooley High, director Michael Schultz and screenwriter Eric Monte—who drew on his own experiences growing up in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project—arrived at something truly unique in 1970s cinema: an endearingly funny, tender, and authentic portrait of Black teens striving toward a brighter tomorrow, brought to life by a dynamic ensemble cast and set to a heavenly hit parade of Motown classics. DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Michael Schultz, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack New conversation between Schultz and film scholar Racquel J. Gates Program on the making of the film Panel discussion from the 2019 tribute to Cooley High at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, featuring Schultz, actor and filmmaker Robert Townsend, casting director Gloria Schultz, and actors Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Garrett Morris English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing