Big MamaFrom California Newsreel:
Winner of an Academy Award in the Documentary Short category, Big Mama depicts a devoted grandmother's struggle to raise her orphaned grandson under the watchful eye of a complex and difficult social welfare system. Big Mama follows 18 months in the lives of Viola Dees, an African American grandmother, and Walter, her grandson, as she tries to raise him alone in South Central Los Angeles. Dees has taken care of Walter since the age of four, when his father (Viola's son) died. Walter appears in the documentary as bright and sweetly loving to his grandmother, but also profoundly troubled, affected by his mother's prenatal drug intake. In the documentary, Walter is nine, and Dees is turning 90.