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.
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.
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.
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.
Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.
An enigmatic drifter from the South comes to visit an old acquaintance who now lives in South-Central LA.
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.
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.
As if adolescence is not hard enough, a young, fatherless teenager living in a small town in the Brazilian heartland, confronts a degenerative eye disease that will ultimately leave him blind. As his vision deteriorates, he goes through the pain and confusion of his unreciprocated first love, and ultimately will have to learn first-hand how to see life with different eyes.
Ange, a rigorous and sensitive teenager, starts his first year in high school. Profoundly unhappy, he starts writing to try to understand himself. While doing so, he befriends three teens who will help him on his path to inner peace.
Mitrice Richardson, a lovely 24 year old African-American woman, was released late at night from the Malibu, California Sheriffs jail after having been detained for not paying her bill at an upscale restaurant. She was described as 'acting crazy' and, in fact, was having a mental crisis. She was released into the mountainous region with no cell, no purse, no ID, no car, no way home and vanished. Eleven months later her remains were found in a desolate Malibu canyon. 'Lost Compassion,' shot from ten days after Mitrice went missing, tells the complex, emotional inside story of the search for Mitrice and struggles with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, whose deputies lied about her arrest and likely were involved with her disappearance and murder.
A few women, wives of a big communist bosses are blackmailed into prostitution but no one is trying to escape this business.
Two friends get more than they bargained for as they try to help a friend find his way home. What ensues is an unwilling night tour through the streets of Seoul(Korea) to help their friend, while testing the limits of their friendship.
About two girls. About love and friendship. About instant noodles…
Whale has used 52 Hz to call to another Whale for many years.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
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.
After treating his rancher cousin shoddily in L.A. Michael Woods is sentenced by his parents to spending a month on the ranch with his cousin and aunt.
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
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?
When a rebellious teen embarks on a solo summer journey to connect with her roots, she finds herself in a new world, geared up for the ride of her life, and discovers she had the drive in her all along.
Jamie Fitzpatrick and Nona Alberts are two women from opposites sides of the social and economic track, but they have one thing in common: a mission to fix their community's broken school and ensure a bright future for their children. The two women refuse to let any obstacles stand in their way as they battle a bureaucracy that's hopelessly mired in traditional thinking, and they seek to re-energize a faculty that has lost its passion for teaching.
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?
After a group of young revolutionaries break into a company's corporate headquarters and steal $5,000,000 worth of heroin to keep it off the street, they call on San Francisco Police Lieutenant Virgil Tibbs for assistance.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
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.
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.
When Tragedy Strikes three Families, their Destiny forces them on a coverging path and mercy as the challenges of their fate could also resurrect their beliefs
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.
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
