A young African-American man, living in Los Angeles without direction in his life, reluctantly agrees to be the best man for his brother, an upwardly mobile lawyer.
Social & External
The people behind it
Everett Silas
Pierce Mundy
Jessie Holmes
Mrs. Mundy
Gaye Shannon-Burnett
Sonia Dubois
Ronnie Bell
Soldier Richards
Dennis Kemper
Mr. Mundy
Sally Easter
Mrs. Richards
Hobert Durham Jr.
Mr. Richards
Angela Burnett
Angela
Cora Lee Day
Big Mama
Frances E. Nealy
Mrs. Debois
Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. —Allyson Nadia Field
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.
In 1902, a Gullah family on the Sea Islands off South Carolina decide whether to migrate to the mainland, risking their unique cultural heritage.
A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.
An enigmatic drifter from the South comes to visit an old acquaintance who now lives in South-Central LA.
A naive young woman moves from the South to stay with her aunt and uncle in Compton. As an outsider, she struggles at first to find her footing, but soon falls into the middle of a community of rebellious youth. She soon becomes more and more aware of the social injustices of the big city.
Dorothy is a poor black woman. Her husband is put in jail for no observable reason, and she is pregnant with a second child. The government threatens to take away her welfare if she does not get an abortion.
Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.
In this meditative film the everyday lives of poor Ethiopian peasants are shown using documentary as well as storytelling techniques, with its drama arising out of the timeless yet persistent issues of their lives.
Eddie Warmack, an African American jazz musician, is released from prison for the killing of a white gangster. Not willing to play for the mobsters who control the music industry, including clubs and recording studios, Warmack searches for his mentor and grandfather, the legendary jazz musician Poppa Harris.
Filmed in response to the LAPD’s shooting of Eulia Love in 1979, Gidget Meets Hondo opens with stills taken by Bernard Nicolas of a demonstration against Love’s killing. Nicolas’ Gidget is a self-absorbed young white woman who remains clueless to the violence erupting around her, ultimately to her own peril. The film asks whether such police brutality would be tolerated if the victim were a middle-class white woman.
This very dark, very Gothic and very grim medieval horror follows the tumultuous reign of Queen Ginnarra and her mounting obsession to murder her exiled brother, the prince, by any means possible. No matter the cost in blood, lives or even souls.
James Wynn wants to ask his deceased father questions about the Family Business. He invents a device that gives him the ability to go back in time to 1985. However, when he arrives, there's a problem.
The plot revolves around a love triangle between Bernie, Muriel's husband, who hires the services of a detective named Oso to investigate his wife. To this is added the participation of Felix, who is the supposed lover.
A dramatization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem 'The Courtship of Miles Standish,' this is the story of the Pilgrims who fled religious persecution in England and came to America aboard the Mayflower.
A young girl named Michiko is kidnapped and later found dead in a bag. But the kidnapper strikes again. The 18th work from the series "Keishicho Monogatari".
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.
A young man with a bright future suffers a near-fatal accident and recreates his new life with the help of an unlikely animal friend.
A successful "house tuner" in New York City, who calibrates the sound in people's homes in order to adjust their moods, meets a client with a problem he can't solve.
Petty crook and cop-killer Martin Rome, in bad shape from wounds in the hospital prison ward, still refuses to help slimy lawyer Niles clear his client by confessing to another crime. Police Lt. Candella must check Niles' allegation; a friend of the Rome family, he walks a tightrope between sentiment and cynicism. When Martin fears Candella will implicate his girlfriend Teena, he'll do anything to protect her. How many others will he drag down to disaster with him?
A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
A reporter, fired after refusing to give names to a 1951 House Un-American Activities Committee, takes a part-time job as companion to an old lady. While working she overhears a noisy argument in the neighboring house, being conducted largely in German and involving her HUAC prosecutor. She begins to investigate, enlisting the help of the FBI Agent initially detailed to surveil her.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
An optimistic, talented teen clings to a huge secret: she's homeless and living on a school bus. When tragedy strikes, can she learn to accept a helping hand?
Jonathan is a young man with a strange condition that only his brother understands. But when he begins to yearn for a different life, their unique bond becomes increasingly tested.
A man in search of revenge infiltrates a ranch, hidden in an inhospitable region, where its owner, Altar Keane, gives shelter to outlaws fleeing from the law in exchange for a price.
In 1950s England, slow-witted Derek Bentley falls in with a group of petty criminals led by Chris Craig, a teenager with a fondness for American gangster films. Chris and Derek's friendship leads to their involvement in the true case which would forever shake England's belief in capital punishment.
Two young Chicago hoodlums, Tom Powers and Matt Doyle, rise up from their poverty-stricken slum life to become petty thieves, bootleggers and cold-blooded killers. But with street notoriety and newfound wealth, the duo feels the heat from the cops and rival gangsters both. Despite his ruthless criminal reputation, Tom tries to remain connected to his family, however, gang warfare and the need for revenge eventually pull him away.
Inspired by true and harrowing events, an ordinary man finds his world suddenly torn apart as devastating wildfires rip through the surrounding countryside. With precious moments ticking by, he must flee with his son and pregnant wife if they have any hope of surviving the rapid forces of mother nature.
Hard-nosed liberal lawyer Roman J. Israel has been fighting the good fight forever while others take the credit. When his partner – the firm's frontman – has a heart attack, Israel suddenly takes on that role. He soon discovers some unsettling truths about the firm – truths that conflict with his values of helping the poor and dispossessed – and finds himself in an existential crisis that leads to extreme actions.
Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
A 9 year old boy experiences God's power in a supernatural way.
A 12-year-old boy manages to flee a Communist concentration camp on his own, through sheer will and determination. All he has in his possession is a loaf of bread, a letter to deliver to someone in Denmark, and a compass to help get him there.
