In order to save their home, tenants of a boarding house put on a show.
During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America's history lost — until now.
An all-Black comedy and dance revue with stars of stage and screen.
Cab Calloway plays himself in a plot about jealousy, night clubs, and gangsters. Ends with a series of musical numbers.
Dramatic events in a Harlem apartment house center around Pa Wilkins, chosen by the Better Business League to replace their ousted, crooked leader Marshall...who wants revenge; and Pa's ward Jim Bracton, a two-timing Romeo whose affairs are coming to a crisis. And hanging around is Marshall's murderous junkie henchman, Lomax. Will it all end in someone's being killed?
A fantasy satire on politics in which a little boy dreams that he becomes President of the U.S. and his 'mammy' is Vice President. The film spotlights two now legendary performers much earlier in their careers: Ethel Waters and Sammy Davis Jr. In his first screen appearance, around the age of seven, pint-sized Davis sings, dances and clowns. Nicknamed 'the beanpole' slim and slinky Waters looks far different from the heavier figure she displayed in Pinky (1949) and Member of the Wedding (1953). Statuesque in a long glamorous white gown, she sings her big hit "Am I Blue." Davis, in turn sings "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You." (Separate Cinema)
Highlights of an Isley Brothers concert filmed at Yankee Stadium in New York City on June 21, 1969.
Robert Gordon, a sheltered 18-year-old youth reared in a Catholic school, believes he has a vocation for the priesthood. He is taken to live with his father in his palatial Florida home. There he falls in love with his step-sister, Patricia Morrow, ten years his senior. He runs away and joins the R.A.F. Shot down in battle, he is rescued and taken to a monastery where he renounces the world to study for the priesthood.
Unscrupulously ambitious, Brutus Jones escapes from jail after killing a guard and, through bluff and bravado, finds himself the emperor of a Caribbean island.
An upstanding young attorney and his girlfriend go after a crooked politician.
In Louisiana, a voodoo priestess and a minister preach their religion to the same community. One day, an evil man named Tom comes into town and tries to force the minister's daughter to go with him to his sinful place across the river where all manners of "evil" things occur like drinking and gambling! It's up to the voodoo priestess to stop Tom before he can corrupt the innocent girl.
Reverend Jesse Hampton has a bone to pick with the management of Club Harlem, a wildly popular nightspot where drinking and dancing are the rule. No old-fashioned prude, the Reverend tries to see the positive side of the juke joint activities, knowing that the jitterbuggers are basically decent kids who just need to blow off a little steam. But the preacher sees red when the club opens on the Sabbath, threatening to turn the good townsfolk into Sunday sinners. An upcoming dance contest seems destined to become a showdown between the powers of light and darkness.
An all-Black comedy and dance revue with stars of stage and screen.
Shares 3 cast members · Same director
Cab Calloway plays himself in a plot about jealousy, night clubs, and gangsters. Ends with a series of musical numbers.
Shares a lead actor · Same director
A down-on-his-luck coach is hired to prepare a team of the best American dancers for an international tournament that attracts all the best crews from around the world, but the Americans haven't won in fifteen years.
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Street dancer Skyler comes out of the shadow of her trained dancer sister, Tosha, & joins a dance competition with the Honey dance studio; the prize is a college scholarship.
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A famous pianist at the twilight of his career meets a free-spirited music critic who soon becomes his rock as his mental state deteriorates.
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The Mambo Kings tells the story of César and Nestor Castillo, brothers and aspiring musicians who flee from Cuba to America in search of the American Dream.
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A shy teenager living on the Isle of Wight dreams of pop stardom. With the help of an unlikely mentor, she enters a singing competition that will test her integrity, talent, and ambition.
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At Mr. Rad's Warehouse, the best hip-hop crews in Los Angeles compete for money and respect. But when a suburban crew crashes the party, stealing their dancers — and their moves — two warring friends have to pull together to represent the street.
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An upstanding young attorney and his girlfriend go after a crooked politician.
Shares a lead actor · Same director
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
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"Laughumentary" about black comedians in Hollywood.
A black voodoo priestess comes out of the Louisiana swamps to take revenge on the white plantation owner she believes killed her husband. The old conjure woman Mandy returns with her daughter Chloe to their bayou home after fifteen years. Chloe was too young to remember much about the bayou, but once Mandy had been a famous voodoo priestess in these parts. But after the whites lynched her husband Sam, she took her little girl & moved away into the Everglades. She seems to have gone a little mad in the intervening years & has returned swearing a belated vengeance against the murdering white folks.
The life story of Richard Pryor (1940-2005), the legendary performer and iconic social satirist who transcended racial and social barriers with his honest, irreverent and biting humor.
Do I Look Like a Lady? (Comedians and Singers) presents a dynamic checkerboard of moving image footage featuring African-American actors and singers from across the 20th century: from Jackie “Moms” Mabley to Eartha Kitt, Whoopi Goldberg, Whitney Houston, and several others. The video focuses on their individual voices as they express heartbreaking roles, pointed lyrics, sharp jokes, and strong statements of resistance to the dominant culture. The work is a powerful, and often riotous, reflection on the roles of black women in the United States.
A feature documentary about Jackie "Moms" Mabley, an African-American stand-up comic and show-biz pioneer who emerged from the Chitlin' Circuit of African-American Vaudeville to become a mainstream star. Once billed as "The Funniest Woman in the World," Mabley pushed the boundaries of comedy by tackling topics such as gender, sex, and racism and performed up until her death in 1975. A true passion project for first-time director Whoopi Goldberg, the documentary shows Mabley's historical significance and profound influence as a performer vastly ahead of her time.
A widow tries to influence the local mayoral election in Baltimore, Maryland, after she discovers that a black candidate is being used by the incumbent mayor to further his own reelection efforts.
