You know a b/w film released in 1959 must be something serious when there are bootlegged copies for sale on the internet and numerous on-line petitions begging for its official release floating about.

Before May of this year, such was the case of Take A Giant Step, directed by Philip Leacock, and starring a very talented cast that included singer/actor Johnny Nash, Ruby Dee, Beah Richards, and Frederick O’Neal, among others.

Thanks to the relatively new movies-on-demand (MOD) DVD movement, we just may start to see an increase in similar releases– if cinema fans do the right thing and get behind it.

Check out the following synopsis of Take A Giant Step:

Pop singer Johnny Nash delivers an affecting performance in this powerful coming-of-age drama. Nash plays Spencer Scott, the only black student in a white middle-class high school, who struggles to find his identity and a culture he can relate to in racially turbulent late 1950s America.

It may not sound like the most entertaining film, but trust me when I tell you that for a film released in 1959, Take A Giant Step goes places you wouldn’t have expected it to.

The MOD DVD movement is being spearheaded by Warner Archive Collection and MGM Limited Edition Collection, two studios that seek to satisfy customer demand, but eliminate costly overhead costs. So the way it works is that your individual choices of particular DVDs are manufactured and packaged only as ordered. By doing it this way, the studios don’t pay for thousands of DVDs to be made, only to have them sit in a warehouse somewhere, waiting to become obsolete forms of media.

Like I said before, this film only received it’s official release this year, but I can tell you that I saw a DVD copy of it long before that. That’s a testament to how devoted fans of Take A Giant Step are. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and request your own on-demand copy.