An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
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.
In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.
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.
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.
The story of Dorothy and her husband T.C. He is a discharged Vietnam veteran who thought he would return home to a "hero's welcome." Instead he is falsely arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Her life revolves around the welfare office and a community facing poverty and unemployment. As a result of the film's events, both the main characters become radicalized and Dorothy eventually turns to violence.
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.
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
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.
After making his granddaughter sleep with the light off, Frank struggles coming to terms with the dark.
When two bounty hunters from different backgrounds stumble upon the same prize, they are forced to work together to navigate the treacherous galaxy.
A brain damaged artist gives his first interview, and finds himself confronted by everything that has led him to this moment.
Aishi, a spirit who has been wandering in the world for 20 years until she accidentally occupies her brother`s body and embarks on a 7-day journey of self-discovery.
A young employee prepares to travel to Alexandria to work as a singer in one of its clubs, but his friends take him to Ras El Bar, and in the summer resort he meets a young woman who made him stop traveling, as he caught a cold while trying to save her from drowning. She had pretended that she was about to drown, and a very fast love developed between them. And her uncle sees them.
Two couples get together to celebrate Christmas, or, rather, kitschmas, because the scenery, the characters and the objects are stuck in 1972. Masked beings perform human rituals—ironing clothes, playing charades and boogie woogie and going to bed.
Erwin blows his first acting job and finds himself stranded in Texas, where he's taken under the wing of a nearly bankrupt oil driller Merle and his cohort Faye. The three set off on a wild adventure to outwit the bank and a corrupt oil company to hit pay dirt before Merle's dreams are foreclosed.