In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles turned the figure of the black hero in US cinema upside down with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: the story of the making of a seminal movie that initiated the Blaxploitation movement, a short-lived but highly influential sub-genre in the years that followed.
Leonard Jackson plays a barber who is also the domineering head of a middle-class African American family. Jackson is forced to rethink his values when his previously docile wife (Clarice Taylor) joins their three children in rebelling against her husband's retrogressive behavior.
An aspiring dancer and her two wicked sisters resent their mother's love for a foster daughter.
This production was originally staged for the Pepsico Summerfare Festival, The International Performing Arts Festival of the State University of New York at Purchase. Leaving the lyrics in their original Italian, acclaimed American director Peter Sellars transports Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to a modern-day metropolis, nestling the opera's beloved characters among the brownstones of New York City's Harlem. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "'Così Fan Tutte."
The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.
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.
As an African American family and friends gather in an apartment for a house party, two mischief-making devil-bats take human form in order to break up the party.
When a minister's wife becomes posessed by Eshu, the Nigerian god of sexuality, an exorcist is called in to drive the evil spirit away.
An 18th century African prince is turned into a vampire while visiting Transylvania. Two centuries later, he rises from his coffin attacking various residents of Los Angeles and meets Tina, a woman who he believes is the reincarnation of his deceased wife.
One of Cannon Films' two 1976 Italian-Israeli co-productions starring Lee Van Cleef and Leif Garrett (Gianfranco Parolini's Pistola di Dio was the other), this spaghetti western was actually shot in the Middle East by American director Joseph Manduke. Pop star Garrett plays Tom, a teenager who teams with a black gunfighter named Isaac (Jim Brown) to avenge his family. The culprit was McClain (Van Cleef), a sadistic outlaw who carried out the brutal rape-massacre, but his role is minor, as most of the film deals with Tom's maturation and coming to terms with his feelings. Omnipresent 1970s character actors Glynnis O'Connor and John Marley co-star. If there is anything remarkable about Kid Vengeance, it is Francesco Masi's fine musical score, but the film is otherwise anemic.
Ben and Beatrice Chambers discover that their son Norman is gay and so Ben is intent on setting him right.
Taking place in the cold and hard winter of 1970 in the slums of Cleveland Ohio instead of the tranquil and pleasant 1967 Summer of Love in the Haight Asbury district of San Francisco. "Ghetto Freaks" is a film that tries to show it's viewers the life and philosophy of a hippie commune and how it, lead by their Guru Sonny, goes through life on the mean streets of a large northern industrial city.
A white ex-GI goes to a black ghetto to deliver a letter from his buddy, a black soldier who died in Vietnam. When he arrives there he encounters hostility and trouble from all sides.
Black girl from rich family loves white boy from poor family.
What Would You Do If Your Mother Was a Hooker?
Thinly disguised account of the relationship between radical black activist Angela Davis and Black Panther and prison inmate George Jackson, who was one of those killed in a failed 1971 prison breakout.
A masked assailant in an organized crime ring mutilates his victims with a straight razor.
A romantic comedy about a man's wife that has a closet secret literally. When James begins to work for the company that rents Closet Spaces, he finds out what his wife has going on behind his back.
Set on a university campus in 1975, this film follows the lives of Q (a Black adoptee), her roommate Jam (the daughter of former Black Panthers), and Marcus (a student who has experienced the school’s discrimination firsthand) as they bond together to form a Black Student Union.