Harry Donaldson

The Happy Lands tracks the lives of the Brogan, Guthrie and Baxter families as they overcome the economic challenges brought about by the 1926 General Strike.

A black and white, fantasy-like recreation of high-society gay men during the Harlem Renaissance, with archival footage and photographs intercut with a story. A wake is going on, with mourners gathered around a coffin. Downstairs is an elegant bar where tuxedoed men dance and talk. One of them has a dream in which he comes upon Beauty, who seems to reject him, although when he awakes, Beauty is sleeping beside him. His story and his visits to the jazz and dance club are framed by voices reading from the poetry and essays of Hughes and others. The text is rarely explicit, but the freedom of gay Black men in the 1920s in Harlem is suggested and celebrated visually.

Liberty, Bash, and their friend Jesse served together in a war in Central America. Now Liberty and Bash work with youths, helping them stay out of crime and becoming a positive part of the community. But Jesse has gotten mixed up with drug lords, and when he turns up dead, it's up to Liberty & Bash to declare another war, this time on the home front. Written by Sean Kilby