"Survival began with a song"
The story of legendary blues performer, Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the 1920s and '30s.
Stream
Social & External
The people behind it
Queen Latifah
Bessie Smith
Mo'Nique
Ma Rainey
Mike Epps
Richard
Tika Sumpter
Lucille
Michael Kenneth Williams
Jack Gee
Charles S. Dutton
William 'Pa' Rainey
Bryan Greenberg
John Hammond
Oliver Platt
Carl Van Vechten
Khandi Alexander
Viola
Tory Kittles
Clarence
Two self-obsessed businessmen discover they're long-lost identical twins and come together to plot the reunion of their eccentric divorced parents.
A white man goes on trial for having raped a black woman.
Satoshi returns to Taketomi Island to take part in his grandmother's 97th birthday 'mandala' party, a special celebration that's unique to this island. Just as he arrives at her house, he learns that she has just passed away. The next day from his grandmother's diary, they discover a long kept secret...
A boy walks through a Carnival fair at night, lost in thought, his only friend, the Moon.
The women of a prosperous provincial family hide unsuspected secrets which range from the entanglements of love to murder for mercy or for greed. The story of these eccentric women combines love, potions, black humor and death.
At the reading of her late husband's will, Gila Maibach learns that there is a co-heiress to her beloved house! At first, Gila is convinced that the attractive Maja is her husband's mistress. However, the perky florist soon turns out to be Lothar's secret daughter. As Gila is unable to pay Maja her inheritance, the heavily pregnant young woman and her young son Max move in with the completely bewildered widow without further ado.
The film investigates the adventures of mountain climber and photographer Adam J. Winkler, who fought in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s. The director employs a highly original artistic technique involving animated collage of period materials.
Roberto is one of those men to whom simulation has become the greatest art. He is an unmoved, inscrutable, mysterious man. But the truth is that Robert feels an intimate, deep tedium. The boredom of those who have already exhausted all the pleasures of life. The only thing still surprising him is the fact that nothing surprises him anymore. One evening he has an overwhelming encounter with a woman. For his own bewilderment, he discovers the sublime horrors in which the woman has sank.
A drama centered on the relationship between a painter who's losing his sight and a maid in a Mexican brothel.
After Rachel Myles' abusive ex-husband vanishes with their children, she takes refuge in the solitude of the desert, where she makes a new career as a search-and-rescue tracker. When a young girl disappears, she searches the desert while praying and hoping for the safe return of her own children. Inspired by actual events based upon the memoir by Hannah Nyala.
Alba, 11 years old, passes her days in silence. She loves little animals. She has learned to cope with her mother's illness, helping her to use the bathroom. Alba plays silently so that her mother can rest during the day. One night Alba's mother gets worse, and has to be taken to the hospital. With no one else to take care of her, Alba is sent to live with her father, who she hasn't seen since she was three years old. Living with her father is almost unbearable. Embarrassment, her first kiss, visits to mother in the hospital, Edgar's tender efforts to get close to her, and bullying at school; these are some of the experiences that pave Alba's journey to puberty and to self-acceptance.
A dwarf and a transvestite, both are excluded from the society and doomed to exist at night. Their lives overlap in a strange encounter and this becomes the start of their friendship.
“Relationship Killers” is a dark, character driven, romantic suspense thriller about two women with a dark secret. They are nearing the end of their second year of marriage, and though they still love each other, the excitement of being newlyweds is starting to wear off. Now they are stuck with the knowledge of each other’s hot button locations and areas of sensitivities while growing increasingly fed up with each other’s idiosyncrasies.
It’s 1968, the military dictatorship is established in Brazil. After murdering a soldier, Alice flees to her hometown, a place she left as a teenager, and hasn’t come back since then. At the bucolic house, she finds her sister Carmem and her first love, Helena. As they organize their late mother's belongings, these women's relationship is put to the test. Alice hides the real reason for her return, Carmem dreams of reuniting with the son she hasn't seen for years and Helena, who became a nun, suffers trying to hide the love she feels for Alice. Powerless in the face of life's circumstances and censored in different social and personal layers, all that remains is to confront each other and themselves.
Examines the relationship between Ekema and his heavily pregnant wife, Joffi. When there is a mysterious role reversal of the sexes in their Cameroonian village, Ekema experiences a day as a pregnant man—throwing a whole new light on his view of Joffi’s feelings.
A love story of two women who meet up in their late forties and attempt to retrieve the romance they had in their youth.
Three 20-year-old-men visit Seoul after their college entrance exam ends. They expect to have some fun with gay people in Itaewon. Meanwhile, in Jongno, two gay men, Han-jae and Ji-hoon, struggle to solve their problems.
When 19 year old Heather Walsh accepts a job on a farm in the Mangatiti Valley, she has no idea paradise will become a nightmare. This true New Zealand story tells of Heather's horrific ordeal.
Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
The story of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in 1950s Chicago, and the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Chuck Berry.
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
In 1966, Helen Reddy landed in New York with her three year old daughter, a suitcase, and $230 in her pocket. Within weeks, she was broke. Within months, she was in love. Within five years, she was one of the biggest superstars of her time and an icon of the 1970s feminist movement who wrote a song which galvanized a generation of women to fight for change.
The story of R&B singer and actress Aaliyah; namely, the highs and lows of her career, her romantic pursuits, and the events leading up to her death in 2001 at the age of 22.
Longing to experience more of life, twentysomething preacher's daughter Angie strikes out on her own for the very first time and joins a traveling gospel show.
Jazz legend Chet Baker finds love and redemption when he stars in a movie about his own troubled life to mount a comeback.
A Soweto schoolgirl named Sarafina is galvanized to protest apartheid after her teacher is arrested for her activism, leading her to join the student resistance movement.
Talented but self-centered trumpeter Bleek Gilliam is obsessed with his music and indecisiveness about his girlfriends Indigo and Clarke. But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend, Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined.
After the death of his younger brother, a troubled 19-year-old street dancer from Los Angeles is able to bypass juvenile hall by enrolling in the historically black, Truth University in Atlanta, Georgia. But his efforts to get an education and woo the girl he likes are sidelined when he is courted by the top two campus fraternities, both of which want and need his fierce street-style dance moves to win the highly coveted national step show competition.
Aspiring small-town musician Chito is determined to make it big. When a clip of him performing one of his songs goes viral, he seizes the opportunity and pushes to carve out a place for himself in the new wave of Mexican-American music... and ultimately gets caught in a game more dangerous than anticipated.
Street dancer Skyler comes out of the shadow of her trained dancer sister, Tosha, & joins a dance competition with the Honey dance studio; the prize is a college scholarship.
The story of the famous and influential 1960s rock band and its lead singer and composer, Jim Morrison.
The second "visual album" (a collection of short films) by Beyoncé, this time around she takes a piercing look at racial issues and feminist concepts through a sexualized, satirical, and solemn tone.
Police Chief Jesse Stone now presides over the quiet, seaside village of Paradise, Massachusetts. When the facts don't add up in a brutal Boston-area murder case, Jesse opens an investigation filled with surprises, unlikely suspects and grave danger. Though it's widely believed the murder was committed by an incarcerated serial killer, Jesse suspects another killer is at large and is hell-bent on bringing him to justice.
The story of Elton John's life, from his years as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music through his influential and enduring musical partnership with Bernie Taupin.
Billie Holiday spent much of her career being adored by fans. In the 1940s, the government targeted Holiday in a growing effort to racialize the war on drugs, ultimately aiming to stop her from singing her controversial ballad, "Strange Fruit."
A chronicle of James Brown's rise from extreme poverty to become one of the most influential musicians in history.
