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, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.
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.
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.
Keiichi is a serious office worker. His only hobby was cross-dressing, but he stopped doing that after getting married. He thought that was fine. I was happy. However, one day, he meets a beautiful young man at a gay bar where his boss forcefully takes him. After having a fateful and dazzling sex with the young man, he finally abandons his family and work and falls into a sensual daily life with the young man. However, those days of pleasure came to an abrupt end...
We are a group of thieves called Gokurakudan. A thief is different from your average thief. It frustrates the bullish and helps the bearish. However, the only drawback is that all the members are gay, and they have a strong weakness for good men. Some cracks began to appear in our iron bond...
Scholar Yuen Man-lung leads a double life as Vigilante Golden Cat. Yuen is separated from his lover Tso Oi-lan by her snobbish father who promises her to Tsui Tai-fei, son of the magistrate and incriminates him as the wanted burglar. Yuen sneaks out of prison and wreaks havoc in Golden Cat's name; the exasperated magistrate has to release him. Before leaving for the imperial exams with the runaway Oi-lan, Yuen stages one final heist for his friend's sake. The officials trail Golden Cat to his house where his nocturnal costume is retrieved. His father is arrested as the criminal. Drawing a plan up her sleeves, Oi-lan's sister Oi-ling whisks the elder out of the execution ground. Despite failing at the exams presided over by corrupt examiners, Yuen saves the emperor on his homecoming journey, and returns triumphant as a duke.