Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday, beginning with her traumatic youth. The story depicts her early attempts at a singing career and her eventual rise to stardom, as well as her difficult relationship with Louis McKay, her boyfriend and manager. Casting a shadow over even Holiday's brightest moments is the vocalist's severe drug addiction, which threatens to end both her career and her life.
After her fiance is falsely imprisoned, a pregnant African-American woman sets out to clear his name and prove his innocence.
A young man searches for the "master" to obtain the final level of martial arts mastery known as the glow. Along the way he must fight an evil martial arts expert and rescue a beautiful singer from an obsessed music promoter.
Set in Harlem in 1947, this film is the story of Grandpa Kansas and his jazz band that set out to become world famous only to be thwarted by jealousy and envy - leaving behind shattered dreams and deep regrets. Though made at NYU, this film was produced under Walt Disney / Hollywood Pictures Discretionary Fund Program, and has won the top prize in multiple film competitions by respected institutions, including The Black American Cinema Society, Black Filmmaker Hall of Fame, and the Atlanta / Image Film Festival.
Harlem, 1943. Sonny is a struggling African American who frequents the bingo parlor in a desperate attempt to provide for his family in post-Depression era New York.
A beautiful black gangster's moll flees to Harlem with a trunkload of gold after a shootout, unaware that the rest of the gang, and a few other unsavoury characters, are on her trail. A pudgy momma's boy becomes the object of her affections and the unlikely hero of the tale.
Tommy McCoy and "Dude" Markey are both in love with Harlem singer/dancer Nita. Markey robs a jewelry store and turns the loot over to gang-boss Murray Howard. Later, Markey robs the safe, steals the jewelry, and, in order to get rid of his rival for Nita, frames the robbery on McCoy. The latter's big-brother thinks otherwise and, with Nita's help, sets out to prove it.
In the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the Mafia steps in when a drug dealer quits his partner and brother to lead a straight life with his girlfriend.
Three sisters start out singing in their church choir in Harlem in the late 1950s and become a successful girl group in the 1960s.
Honey Daniels dreams of making a name for herself as a hip-hop choreographer. When she's not busy hitting downtown clubs with her friends, she teaches dance classes at a nearby community center in Harlem, N.Y., as a way to keep kids off the streets. Honey thinks she's hit the jackpot when she meets a hotshot director casts her in one of his music videos. But, when he starts demanding sexual favors from her, Honey makes a decision that will change her life.
Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.
A revisionist twist on Cinderella with an all-black cast and set in Harlem during WWII. Cindy is a country bumpkin who moves from South Carolina to live with her father and his new family. When her stepmother and two stepsisters refuse to take her to the Sugar Hill Ball, her draft-dodging, chauffeur neighbor whips up a little "magic" and at the ball she catches the eye of the richest man in Harlem.
Flea was a basketball player, happy with his subtle hustle, until a Dominican connect introduced him to a new way to spread the work and make money.
An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his white girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.
In Harlem in 1987, Claireece "Precious" Jones is a 16-year-old African American girl born into a life no one would want. She's pregnant for the second time by her absent father, and at home she must wait hand and foot on her mother, an angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is chaotic and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and a secret – she can't read.
After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.
In 1920s New York City, a Black woman finds her world upended when her life becomes intertwined with a former childhood friend who's passing as white.
A fifteen-year-old boy wants to buy a gun from an adult racketeer named Priest, in order to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem.
Harlem, 1926. A “sweetman” Zeddy, living off a woman, brings a country girl he’s trying to impress to a gay-owned cabaret. There he meets a friend, Jake, whose girlfriend, Congo Rose, is the singer there. Drama swirls around the characters as Zeddy confronts the cabaret owner, about his sexuality. Congo Rose, seeking to reignite her man’s fading interest, puts on a performance, with her Pansy Dancer, of a Bessie Smith song that seduces the whole room, especially Zeddy.
A coming-of-age story, drama set in Harlem. A 15 year old named, Kae, is raised by her overprotective, single father who wants to be allowed to walk home by herself. But in order to get what she wants, her relationship with her father is tested, and she is forced to confront a former friend, whose jealousy comes to a breaking point.