The fact that some Sidney Poitier movies look dated in terms of the way race is portrayed is a testament to the monumental shift the actor spurred over six decades on the big screen. Following Film Forum’s 2019 “Black Women” series, and a two-year coronavirus delay, this four-week, 47-item festival pays tribute to Poitier, the first major Black movie star of his generation—and the first to win an Oscar for Best Actor, for Lilies of the Field (playing on April 3 and 4)—as well as his contemporaries Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., James Edwards, James Earl Jones, Canada Lee, and Brock Peters. Poitier classics include 1958’s The Defiant Ones (April 2, 6, 10, and 21), 1961’s A Raisin in the Sun (April 3 and 4) and Paris Blues (April 8 and 15), and the controversial films of 1967, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (April 15, 17, and 21) and In the Heat of the Night (April 2, 8, 10, and 25). “Poitier almost singlehandedly changed Hollywood’s image of Black America,” said Donald Bogle, a film historian and the festival’s programmer. He and his contemporaries also changed how Black Americans saw Hollywood. —Julia Vitale