1930's Pittsburgh, a brother comes home to claim "my half of the piano", a family heirloom; but his sister is not wanting to part with it. This is a glimpse of the conditions for African-Americans as well as some of the attitudes and influences on their lives. But whether he is able to sell the piano so that he can get enough money to buy some property and "no longer have to work for someone else" involves the story (or lesson) that the piano has to show him.
Young members of 3 New Orleans school marching bands grow up in America's most musical city, and one of its most dangerous. Their band directors get them ready to perform in the Mardi Gras parades, and teach them to succeed and to survive.
The Jesse Owens Story is a biographical film about the black athlete Jesse Owens. Dorian Harewood plays the Olympic gold-winning athlete. The drama won a 1985 Primetime Emmy Award and was nominated for two more.
The tender, heartbreaking story of a young man’s struggle to find himself, told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love, while grappling with his own sexuality.
Set in modern upper-crust Manhattan, an exploration of love and commitment as seen through the eyes of a charming perpetual bachelor questioning his single state and his enthusiastically married, slightly envious friends.
In 1950s Pittsburgh, a frustrated African-American father struggles with the constraints of poverty, racism, and his own inner demons as he tries to raise a family.
A filmmaker sets out to discover the life of Joyce Vincent, who died in her bedsit in North London in 2003. Her body wasn't discovered for three years, and newspaper reports offered few details of her life - not even a photograph.
On the streets they call cash dead presidents. And that's just what a Vietnam veteran is after when he returns home from the war only to find himself drawn into a life of crime. With the aid of his fellow vets he plans the ultimate heist -- a daring robbery of an armored car filled with unmarked U.S. currency!
This made-for-TV movie dramatizes the historic boycott of public buses in the 1950s, led by civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On the outskirts of the Civil War, a boy is sent north by a bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted man.
Teachers at an all-black school fight to save a problem child.
HBO Standing Room Only presentation of the 1981 stage revival. From the Neil Simon Book. New Yorkers Paul Bratter and Corie Bratter née Banks have just gotten married. He is a stuffed shirt just starting his career as a lawyer. She is an independently minded free spirit who prides herself on doing the illogical purely out of a sense of adventure
This short film by Ava DuVernay celebrates a love of African-American culture, camaraderie, love and romance.
This film relates the story of a tightly connected Afro-American community informally called Colored Town where the inhabitants live and depend on each other in a world where racist oppression is everywhere, as told by a boy called Cliff who spent his childhood there. Despite this, we see the life of the community in all its joys and sorrows, of those that live there while others decide to leave for a better life north. For those remaining, things come to a serious situation when one prominent businessman is being muscled out by a white competitor using racist intimidation. In response, the community must make the decision of whether to submit meekly like they always have, or finally fight for their rights.
A gang of black militants plots to rob a factory to finance their "revolutionary struggle."
This film traces the improbable journey of Charley Pride, from his humble beginnings as a sharecropper’s son on a cotton farm in segregated Sledge, Mississippi to his career as a Negro American League baseball player and his meteoric rise as a trailblazing country music superstar. The new documentary reveals how Pride’s love for music led him from the Delta to a larger, grander world.
Asian man. Black woman. Two people from different worlds bond over rap, food and friendship. A hip-hop "When Harry Met Sally". "Save the Last Dance" meets "Tampopo."
After suffering with the dire consequences of being in the closet, a group of lesbian friends forge a pact to deal with the dire consequences of coming out.
Dramatic events in a Harlem apartment house center around Pa Wilkins, chosen by the Better Business League to replace their ousted, crooked leader Marshall...who wants revenge; and Pa's ward Jim Bracton, a two-timing Romeo whose affairs are coming to a crisis. And hanging around is Marshall's murderous junkie henchman, Lomax. Will it all end in someone's being killed?
A womanizing night club singer who has his pick of many beautiful showgirls tries to climb socially and break into society but soon discovers the social and class differences are insurmountable.