Gary, who’s been diagnosed with social anxiety, lives a lonely lifestyle suffering mild panic attacks. In a brash attempt to make a friend, he meets Alexis, who has been diagnosed with ADD. Through a series of events, together they attempt to find the one person who Gary has never had anxiety around, his high school girlfriend Kayla.
Fifty years after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of busing children to achieve racial integration in schools, The Tower Road Bus revisits the unresolved stories of African-American students and educators thrust into all-white schools during the 1970s.
Against the backdrop of violent anti-busing protests across the nation, Dotson Burns, Jr, a child of Jim Crow-ridden Fort Worth, Texas, lands on the frontlines of school integration, first as a teacher and then as the first Black principal of a majority-white school in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Mindful of the eyes of white parents and the suspicions of Black students and families, he must oversee the busing of frustrated Black students from the historically-Black community of Tower Road to the mostly white Crestview Elementary School.
While debates over racial justice and equity reach a boil in 2021, The Tower Road Bus brings Burns, his teachers and students, and the audience face to face with the ambitious yet controversial integration measures that seized the national agenda 50 years ago and continue to mold our conversation around equity.
Between Forever is a day in the lives of two completely different people. One is steady empowered woman -April who works for the EPA and is married to the right person for everyone else but herself. By total accident she meets the complete opposite to her estranged husband, Marlon a cook who has had way too many mishaps in his life. Marlon is also at the crossroads with choices to make on how to straighten his life. Their serendipitous meeting not only changes their outlook on life but alters their future and what happens between forever.
Ain’t Your Mama’s Heat Wave is a stand up comedy special from the frontlines of the climate crisis. It’s filmed in the St. Paul’s district of Norfolk, VA, a Black public housing community that is being redeveloped because of climate flooding, sea level rise, and a legacy of racist urban policies. The city of Norfolk, which is below sea level and sinking, is grappling with the climate crisis and racial injustice.
Four Black millennial stand-up comedians, hailing from Virginia Beach, Atlanta, Chicago, and Ohio, take the stage to “make the climate crisis funny” in front of a St. Paul’s audience who are at risk for a Hurricane Katrina-like disaster and who are currently being displaced from their homes. Things are not so funny when it’s clear that climate threats can mean life or death. But, in the Black American tradition of struggle, resilience, and triumph in the face of existential threat, the joy of comedy, music, and art informs and empowers.
The comedy of this show helps everyone see that the climate crisis is much more than a crisis; it’s an opportunity for us to right wrongs and truly make life on this planet better for everyone. The joy of comedy, laughter, and finding the humor in existential threat, makes the project a new genre of climate storytelling. We laugh so we don’t cry. We can come together because we can laugh together.
Three South African gogos (grandmothers) take on a journey to Europe. As they travel, they tell the true story of gogos, who often replace parents in raising and educating children in South Africa.
In Spring 2020, the Acres of Ancestry Initiative/Black Agrarian Fund collaborated with the South Carolina Lowcountry hip hop group, Native Son, to create the anthem for our campaign, “The Land.” “The Land” is our generation’s love offering to the beautiful struggle to protect 1.5 million acres of Black farmlands from USDA dispossession. Our work continues to grow with Native Son with Restoration: A Concert Film. The film explores southern Black agrarian stories of self-determination, land ownership, and folkwit; amplifies ongoing struggles for restorative land justice in this country including the Black Farmers’ Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign; and weaves together live musical performances from Native Son and the personal narratives of Black legacy farmers and land stewards throughout the film.
A Walk in Her Shoes is a full feature film that shares one woman’s intimate story of personal discovery, empowerment, and triumph. In a quest to overcome one of the biggest obstacles of her life, Metra Lundy simulates a walk to freedom by re-tracing the steps of the great American heroine, Harriet Tubman. In doing so, Metra discovers who she really is.
The Black Disquisition is an affecting true story of the traumatic event in a boy’s life that fractures his self image and the difficult conversation his parents must have with him about race in America. With its avant garde narrative structure and rotoscope animation this film illuminates how a brief childhood encounter can alter a life well into adulthood.
THE ROAD TO JUSTICE follows two groups on a civil rights tour through the American South as they reckon with our painful history of racial injustice. The first, a group of predominantly Black middle school students from Chicago, and the second, a group of older Americans who lived through the 1960's Civil Rights era. They come face to face with the leaders and everyday heroes whose courage and perseverance paved the way for future generations. The film was produced in partnership with The Nation, which began as the abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator" in 1831.
THE NEUTRAL GROUND is a feature length documentary about New Orleans’ fight over monuments and America’s centuries-long relationship with the Lost Cause. THE NEUTRAL GROUND follows writer and comedian CJ Hunt as he documents the struggle to remove and the struggle to preserve New Orleans’ confederate monuments. After witnessing this fight in his adopted city, CJ then explores how we understand a collective history as a nation with a contentious past.
With the recent political, racial, and global unrest occurring throughout 2020/2021, writer and performer, Philicia Saunders, wrote a one-woman live theater show based on her life-changing personal journey towards activism after a chance trip to a Civil Rights monument during a civil rights tour in Alabama, and mentorship by a luminary of activism in Watts, California, Sweet Alice Harris. Unfortunately, no one ever saw that live theater version of the show because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, necessity is the mother of invention, and Saunders knew that this story would educate, inspire, and transform those who see it. Thus came Breathe. Directed by award-winning playwright/performer Roger Q. Mason, this film is art activism - fusing live performance, cinema, performance art and artistic swimming in a hybridized narrative that could only be born during these challenging, yet galvanizing times.
This film is not just a reflection of Saunders' own experience of racism, but it is also a glimpse into the myriad ways that racial bias affects millions of people of color around the world.
A social worker investigating teen pregnancies in a rural African village stops at nothing, including fighting her inner-demons, to protect children from abuse. Fast-paced infomercials on child abuse with actionable recommendations from community activists are interwoven into this engaging docudrama.
Black people are nine times more likely to face stop and search than white people - 18 times more likely under Section 60, where no reasonable suspicion is required. There is the endless list of deaths in police custody - where no British police officer has ever faced prosecution. Black women are twice as likely as white women, and black men are 3.3 times as likely than white men, to die from COVID-19 in the UK.
Britain was the leading slaver nation, carrying 40% of all Africans transported between 1761 and 1807.
"Blight is the flood used to drown Black communities." It isn't an accident, its strategic economic violence by policy. Community activists and organizers work diligently to counter the disinvestment, devaluation and displacement of Baltimore's Black communities.
Dis-placia: Vacants in the Village is the third part of Fight Blight Bmore's series to increase awareness about blight in Baltimore. It builds on part I, a transmedia exhibition, and part II a community-based hack-a-thon to create a feature-length documentary film that exposes what blight is, how it came into being, what must be done to address it and how the community is doing its part to solve the problem.
Dis-placia delivers an Afrofuturist critique of local policy, real estate
development, and business engagement's impact on community development efforts in Baltimore.
Joella Crichton aims to win for a historic tenth time in Caribbean Carnival's Queen Competition, in her final year. A tenth win would forever solidify her legacy in the Caribbean-Canadian community. Joella hopes to leverage this legacy to be viewed as an ambassador for Caribbean Carnival, educating youth and the larger society on its significance so that the vibrant event is seen as the fine art that it truly is.
James and Nia, a heterosexual married couple have a discussion about what sparked their love affair, confront their conflicting thoughts about having children and the future of their relationship. However, Nia has a secret to reveal.
When these five Black lawyers set out on their journeys to receive a professional legal education, they did not realize that they would have to struggle against additional battles even more challenging than the rigors of learning the law in a hypercompetitive environment. They discover the contradictions of studying in an institution that idealistically represents "justice" for all.
Why do Black LGBTQ+ voices still struggle to obtain mainstream fame and notoriety in the Hip Hop and Pop industry? Three Baltimore Hip Hop/Pop artist get candid about their music and being gay in the industry.
This is the amazing true story of a black American actor from New York City in the 1800s who immigrates to Europe overcomes racism in the Shakespearian theater community and achieves worldwide fame....including becoming the first black man to perform Othello on a London stage.
In 1979, Larry Williams entered prison and was released 42 years later.
FIRST WEEK OUT follows Larry’s pivotal first week of freedom. Follow Larry in his first week out as he tries to make sense of his past, navigates life in a re-entry home, reunites with an old prison friend, applies for a job, meets with a new mentor, and forges a path forward.
Research has shown that the first week out of prison for formerly incarcerated men and women will define their future success or failure. After serving their sentences, it is vital for individuals to have an opportunity to become a functioning member of society.
Every week there are more than 10,000 people in America like Larry experiencing their first week out of prison. Within three years, two out of three won’t make it and will end up back in prison. We wanted to tell Larry’s story to encourage viewers to join the thousands of people and organizations across the country helping individuals like Larry beat the odds.
Three White people and one Black man wordlessly enjoy dinner while in the front yard a disheveled Black man is brutally assaulted by police. The sounds of his suffering seem to only momentarily distract these strange people from their meal. However, as events outside escalate, one of the guests, the Black man, grows increasingly anxious. As his demeanor changes from numb to responsive, the people around him grow uncomfortable.
When fiercely independent Monika moves back to New York from Los Angeles determined to make it this time completely on her own, the last thing she ever expected was to meet Trent with an open heart and open arms.
Sundays In July takes an intimate look at two lovers navigating the minefield of their egos, fears, and flaws to dive into the most foreign and uncharted territory- true love.
How Power Looks explores methods of establishing power within the historical context of the University of Virginia. This film juxtaposes Jefferson’s “Academical Village” as a backdrop with current students of color dressed in regency era colonial garb made from African Kente cloth. The students wear white face, and sing about the inception of the African Diaspora stemming from forced displacement due to the transatlantic slave trade. This functions as an institutional critique by foregrounding the power and absurdity of whiteness at this institution while nodding to the atrocities that made this form of whiteness possible. By appropriating whiteness through the use of makeup, costume and song, this video indicts the University of Virginia’s glossy erasure of its troubled history and compares it to the erasure of black history caused by slavery which UVA still benefits from today.
Marnesba Tackett, is an unsung hero in the Civil Rights Movement and NAACP member for over 90 years. Her challenges were not only being light-skinned, who refused to pass as "white," but as a woman trying to burst through barriers in a male-dominated world. Thus, she fought against both racial and gender inequality in all she did.
Mrs. Tackett was responsible for bringing Martin Luther King to Los Angeles to share his message "we want to be free" with over 30,000 people. This close friend of Rosa Parks fought for equality in the Insurance industry, for equal housing practices, and was instrumental in desegregating and integrating schools for all children. Marnesba was affectionately referred to as a relentless "feisty fighter," for her lifelong activism combined with her strong self-esteem in being a proud Black woman who tirelessly helped pave the way towards equal rights.
A group of female childhood friends Sechelela, Zamoyoni, Ginger and Jamila who also happen to be jobless yet qualified lawyers, decide to bow out and find a way to survive in a demanding society in order to pay their bills. A long their journey they go through multiple personal challenges in their relationships, social life and marriage. They decide to meet up for lunch in one of their favorite restaurants to device a plan to please Sechelela whose marital life is under extreme pressure resulting into depression.
Each one of them grabs an opportunity to attempt to please Sechelela for her birthday by giving her a treat involving an uncomfortable traditional ‘mad’ spa in a village, a lady’s only holiday trip and a wine testing. In the process, their weakness are exposed, a long time grudge resurfaces and the sorority bonds are that hold these ladies together are bent. Will they be broken?
"We haven't been this divided since 1968." Unfortunately, this has become a common refrain. Finding Fellowship goes back in time to 1968, an unmistakably divided time of student protest and racial unrest, to share the remarkable story of three racially segregated churches in Quince Orchard, Maryland coming together in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination. Their decision to merge will surprise you. Their dedication to stay together will inspire you.
Finding Fellowship is a story of the possible that reminds us that even in these divided times, the opportunity and responsibility to come together -- heart to heart and hand to hand -- rests within each of us.
Crowned Queen of the Underworld, a Black female gangster runs the most lucrative gambling ring in D.C. in the 1950s and manages to keep the D.C. police in her back pocket.
A biography woven with a cautionary tale, this film delves into the story of a multi-faceted woman who became one of the most powerful women in D.C.’s history and challenged the idea of what a lady could be and how far she could go.
Alex, a young Harlem Renaissance artist and writer, plays around at love and life until he meets Beauty, appropriately named, who makes no bones about his same-sex desires. Troubled and confused, Alex wavers on the brink of passion until a challenge posed by his girlfriend forces his hand.
An English exam takes two college students on a journey of defining their relationship
Chicago: America’s Hidden War pulls back the curtain and takes an inside war-journalistic approach to the insidious violence that’s plagued Chicago’s streets for far too long. Through riveting access, this film exposes Chicago’s pervasive genocidal-like behavior; what birthed and contributed to this war; and why so little is done to stop the normalization of Chicago's new homicidal culture.
Though frighteningly eye-opening, this important documentary is also filled with actionable hope, turning apathy into empathy. Chicago: America's Hidden War ultimately culminates as a much-needed catalyst to wake Americans up & into action - regardless of locale - to declare Chicago: This is OUR war.
En route to an audition, aspiring actress Leila stops at a motel and hooks up with one of the locals. After swallowing a weed edible, she is flooded with paranoia and insecurity about her physical appearance as a transwoman. To make matters worse, everywhere she turns she sees the apparition of her biggest tormentor.
Will she summon the courage to vanquish the demons of her past once and for all?
Disco is a street artist and poet of peace who spends most days selling his drawings at the corner of Wayne & Berkley in Philadelphia, PA. In this energetic and unflinchingly honest dive into his universe, we get a taste for his unrelenting vision for the future of his community. An impassioned declaration of all it takes to survive and thrive in modern America.
Erika appears to have everything: a great job, an upscale apartment and what appears to be the perfect man (MICHAEL).
However, all is not well.
There is an underlying tension with her father, JAMES, and a much younger looking woman, GWEN.
At her brother's graduation party ex, DARREN, arrives with his new "upgrade": a young, modelesque woman who always says the right thing.
In the wake of the 2020 End SARS protests against Nigerian police brutality, Ije learns that she has been admitted to pursue her education in an Ivy League School in the United States. Motivated by Chika, her outgoing cousin and roommate, Ije agrees to go out in Lagos to celebrate this good news.
At the club, they meet two young men (Ema and John) with whom they immediately hit it off and have a good time. Sparks fly between Ije and John as they experience strong chemistry. So, at the end of the night, John offers to drive Ije and Chika home.
However, during the drive, they are stopped by two Nigerian police officers.
A housekeeper experiences a brief episode of anxiety while looking after a yuppie couple's house for the day.
Voodoo Macbeth follows the first all-black cast to perform Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by an arrogant Orson Welles in 1936 Harlem, NY. Inspired by true events, the film engages in a timely dialogue told with a contemporary perspective set in the 1930s.
One of the most unique elements of the film lies within the project's formation. With a grant from Warner Bros, USC was able to continue its almost decade-long feature filmmaking experiment with the production of Voodoo Macbeth.
The Black Disquisition is an affecting true story of the traumatic event in a boy’s life that fractures his self image and the difficult conversation his parents must have with him about race in America. With its avant garde narrative structure and rotoscope animation this film illuminates how a brief childhood encounter can alter a life well into adulthood.
In 1979, Larry Williams entered prison and was released 42 years later.
FIRST WEEK OUT follows Larry’s pivotal first week of freedom. Follow Larry in his first week out as he tries to make sense of his past, navigates life in a re-entry home, reunites with an old prison friend, applies for a job, meets with a new mentor, and forges a path forward.
Research has shown that the first week out of prison for formerly incarcerated men and women will define their future success or failure. After serving their sentences, it is vital for individuals to have an opportunity to become a functioning member of society.
Every week there are more than 10,000 people in America like Larry experiencing their first week out of prison. Within three years, two out of three won’t make it and will end up back in prison. We wanted to tell Larry’s story to encourage viewers to join the thousands of people and organizations across the country helping individuals like Larry beat the odds.
Artist Hamilton Glass challenges 30 artists from different cultural backgrounds to collaborate on 16 murals in Richmond, VA about race, status and experiences. In real-time footage and testimonial, the film shows how the artists got to know each other through difficult conversations, how working together ultimately opened their eyes and their hearts to the differences between all of us, and how these murals became a symbol of hope for the future for a community in pain.
Glove is the true story of Richard Glover Jr., a 27 year old Veteran, who struggles with life after the Army.
100 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, over 50 of Oklahoma's best artist come together to create a commemorative album to honor the legacy of BlackWallStreet. This was a recorded in 5 days and right on the famous Greenwood Avenue.
Frank McKinney is the first (and only) Black college rugby coach in the U.S. When Frank is hired to build a new rugby team at a predominantly white Southern university, his dream was of bringing diversity to the game that he loved was suddenly within reach. Character and good grades required. Rugby skills? Optional.
Craft beer generates tens of billions of dollars annually for the US economy. Despite beer’s Egyptian and African heritage, these traditions have been mostly forgotten and are rarely found in American brewing culture. Today, Black-owned breweries make up less than 1% of the nearly 9,000 breweries in operation. Eager to shift the historical perception of who makes and drinks beer, Black brewers, brand owners and influencers across the country are reshaping the craft beer industry and the future of America’s favorite adult beverage.