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.
Social & External
Dorothy
T.C.
Molly
Simmi
Social Worker
Dahomey Man
Luann
Ben
Angi
Young Street Boy
1st Welfare Recipient
2nd Welfare Recipient
Secretary
Policeman
Preacher
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For the first time, Slava spends a day with her father, Roman, who is home on leave from the war. They go to return an expensive carpet he bought for her, and Slava must navigate the distance that eight years of service has created between them.
After her father's death, a grieving young girl moves to Rock Springs, Wyoming with her mother and grandmother, only to discover something monstrous hidden in the town’s history and the woods behind their new house.
Based on the drama by Dmitry Averkiev. The reign of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible. Boyar Vorotynsky loudly expresses his indignation at the untruth. Many agree with the boyar in their hearts, only Malyuta hates him and dreams of revenge. Having whispered to Grozny about Vorotynsky, he receives an order to arrest him.
Julia reaches the semifinals for the lead role in a musical comedy. But, because her grandfather wants to sell the family hotel, beloved by her father who died a year ago, she feels she must take over and postpones her dream, exacerbating her eating disorder. Her only hope is that her grandmother, who abandoned the family business, will return, reconcile with her grandfather, and take his place.
A dramatisation of the workers' protests in June 1976 in Radom, seen from the perspective of the local Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party.
Witek runs after a train. Three variations follow on how such a seemingly banal incident could influence the rest of Witek's life.
On a cold night, psychology student Liu Kai took Jing Huan, a paranoid schizophrenia patient, to a mysterious frozen lake she had often dreamed of. The lake reflected an “8” shape, causing Jing Huan’s expression to change, unsettling Liu Kai. During an internship at a psychiatric hospital, Liu Kai’s classmate Xie Ni, who was in a relationship with him, became interested in Jing Huan, a former factory cashier who developed mental illness after embezzling funds. Xie Ni wanted to study Jing Huan’s condition for a thesis and asked Liu Kai to help her, even arranging for Jing Huan to stay at her home.
In December 1937, during the Second Japanese-Sino War, a Chinese doctor, his Japanese pregnant wife, their teenage daughter and their young son travel from Shanghai to Nanjing seeking shelter in the Capital during the Japanese invasion. The family faces the Rape of Nanking by the Imperial Japanese Army, with rapes, mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians including women, children and elders, and disrespect of international conventions.
In New York City, a young girl is caught in the middle of her parents' bitter custody battle.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
Louis Menkins is five weeks away from being released after 26 years in prison. He is faced with the decision to put his own release at risk in order to protect a young man named Beecher from growing gang controversies.
A man is released from prison after 15 years. He reunites with his high school girlfriend, now a single mother of three. What follows is a lyrical take on love, regret and second chances.
Escaped convict Sam Gillen single-handedly takes on ruthless developers who are determined to evict a widow with two young children.
Raised in a poverty-stricken slum, a 16-year-old girl named Starr now attends a suburban prep school. After she witnesses a police officer shoot her unarmed best friend, she's torn between her two very different worlds as she tries to speak her truth.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
Mouse desperately wants to join The Midnight Clique, the infamous Baltimore dirt bike riders who rule the summertime streets. When Midnight’s leader, Blax, takes 14-year-old Mouse under his wing, Mouse soon finds himself torn between the straight-and-narrow and a road filled with fast money and violence.
A former special forces contractor is forced out of retirement as an avocado farmer in Mexico when local gangsters try to force him and his family off their farm.
After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.
A prisoner leads his counterparts in a protest for better living conditions which turns violent and ugly.
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.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.