Ruby Dee

Dr. Elena Kinder and Dr. Heap work for BABYCO, the world's leading manufacturer in baby products. What the public doesn't know, however, is that Dr. Kinder and Dr. Heap are secretly working on cracking the code to "baby talk" which is actually a highly sophisticated language which allows babies to communicate the knowledge of the secrets of the universe with which they are born. Problems arise when Sly, the smartest of the babies, escapes from the lab... (imdb)

It's the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and tensions are growing there, with the only local businesses being a Korean grocery and Sal's Pizzeria. Mookie, Sal's delivery boy, manages to always be at the center of the action.

The Cat People originated way back in time, when humans sacrificed their women to Leopards, who mated with them... (imdb)

Walter Lee Younger (Poitier) is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall... (imdb)

Bobby Earl is facing the electric chair for the murder of a young girl. Eight years after the crime he calls in Paul Armstrong, a professor of law, to help prove his innocence. Armstrong quickly uncovers some overlooked evidence to present to the local police, but they aren't interested - Bobby was their killer. (imdb)

Devon Butler is an eight-year old who dreams of being a cop. He watches police TV shows, knows police procedures, and plays cops and robbers with his friend Ray. One day, while snooping around in a warehouse, he witnesses a murder. (imdb)

The Biddle brothers, shot while robbing a gas station, are taken to the prison ward of the County Hospital; Ray Biddle, a rabid racist, wants no treatment from black resident Dr. Luther Brooks. (imdb)

After the world is decimated by a man-made plague, a battle of literally Biblical proportions ensues between the survivors. (imdb)

The story of a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as he travels on the Ohio & Baltimore Railway to his inauguration in 1861. A discredited detective tries in the face of disbelief to foil the plotters, who hate the President's policies.

The passengers on a New York subway car are terrorized by two teenage delinquents. Although outnumbered, the teenagers take advantage of the passenger's passivity and unwillingness to act together. We watch how the different personalities of the passengers react to the situation. (imdb)

In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country in the coffins of soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. (imdb)

A matriarch organizes a feast with her family, in which she will name her successor. (imdb)

Two New York City longshoremen Axel Nordmann (John Cassavetes), an Army deserter and Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier), an easy-going freight car loader who's growing friendship is threatened by Charles Malik (Jack Warden), a notably repellent punk. Feature film debut of noted director Martin Ritt. (imdb)

Murray is a male fairy godmother, and he is trying to help 8-year-old Anabel to fulfil her "simple wish" - that her father Oliver, who is a cab driver, would win the leading role in a Broadway musical. Unfortunately, Murray's magic wand is broken and the fairies convention is threatened by evil witches Claudia and Boots. (imdb)

A down and out private detective (Berenger) is asked by a beautiful woman (Archer) to follow her lover (Young) because she thinks he may be planning to kill her. Due to her poor description she's in danger. He ends up following the wrong man, but discovers the wrong man has some sleazy secrets himself. Meanwhile another detective (Perkins) has been hired to follow Berenger, and they eventually decide to work together to find out what is really going on. (imdb)

Biographical retrospective on Martin Luther King, Jr.

A wagon master and a con-man preacher help freed slaves dogged by cheap-labor agents out West. (imdb)

A moving and uplifting drama about the effects of interracial marriage in the 1960s. Friends since childhood. (imdb)

A drama set in the 1920s, where free-spirited Janie Crawford's search for happiness leads her through several different marriages, challenging the morals of her small town. Based on the novel by Zora Neale Hurston. (imdb)

Shelley Winters is the madame of a house where customers play out their erotic fantasies, oblivious to a revolution which is sweeping the country. When her old friend, the chief of police (Peter Falk), asks her to impersonate the missing queen in order to reassure the people and halt the revolution, she offers instead three of her customers to play the general, bishop and chief justice, all of whom have died in the revolution. (imdb)

The city of Atlanta, Georgia, is terrorized by a rash of child murders occurring in its black community. When a black photographer is arrested for the crimes, controversy erupts over whether he is the actual killer or a scapegoat offered up by the city's mostly black leadership. (imdb)

US prisons are the most crowed in the nation's history and they hold more people per capita than any other country in the world thanks to the Rockefeller Drug Laws which mandate minimum sentences of 15 years to life for first-time offenders. The film follows the reform efforts of outraged families and the hip-hop community including Russell Simmons. Highlighted in the film is the moving struggle of Wanda Best, whose husband Darryl was sentenced to 15 years under the Rockefeller Drug Laws. (Amazon.com)

Biography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues. (imdb)

Abraham Lincoln the man, from his arrival in Washington to his assassination.

The story of former Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella, whose career was cut short in 1959 when he lost the use of his legs in an auto accident. (imdb)

A true story of a priest (Andre Braugher) in New Orleans who formed a group of black players and challenged an all-white prep school basketball team in the 1960's. Eventually events like these signaled the pivotal turn in the games' history leading to the integration in today's sport. Directed by Steve James (Hoop Dreams), these basketball players didn't just make shots, they made history. (Amazon.com)

The Informer, remade in black America in the days after MLK's assassination.

A young, idealistic man returns home to the plantation where he grew up in servitude. With him, he brings his fiance, Lutiebelle, in hopes of convincing the plantation owner that she is really his cousin in order to secure the family inheritance. To aid in the comic complications that follow are his family members Missy and Gitlow, and the plantation owners endearing (but ineffectual) son Charlie. (imdb)

Evan and Tina want to live their lives differently. They go to live on an island. Tina's mother is concerned about her daughter's future. There is smuggling going on on the island. (imdb)

Here is the real rage behind today's tormented "Blue Jeans" Generation! Here's what makes them tick..What makes them tough..What makes them tremble..What makes them take a giant step! (imdb)

A rape case opens racial divisions in a small town. A black sheriff and his white deputy investigate allegations that a wealthy white businessman raped a black college student. (imdb)

The story of Abe Saperstein and the creation of the Harlem Globetrotters. (imdb)

A blasé guy learns that he has only 1,000 words left to speak before he will die. (imdb)

The dramatization of Alex Haley's family line from post Civil War America to the writer's search for his roots. (imdb)

Will Handy grows up in Memphis with his preacher father and his Aunt Hagar. His father intends for him to use his musical gifts only in church, but he can't stay away from the music of the streets and workers. After he writes a theme song for a local politician, Gogo, a speakeasy singer, convinces Will to be her accompanist. Will is estranged from his father for many years while he writes and publishes many blues songs. (imdb)

A cantankerous widower (Garner) who is virtually living the life of a recluse is forced to rejoin his community when his Godchild (Skaggs) gets in trouble and a childhood friend (Cobbs), a black tenant farmer, refuses to belatedly accept a Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery in World War II. (imdb)

Set in nineteenth-century New Orleans, the story depicts the gens de couleur libre, or the Free People of Colour, a dazzling yet damned class caught between the world of white privilege and black oppression. (imdb)

An aspiring dancer and her wicked sister's resent their mother's love for a foster daughter. (imdb)

The film chronicles the life and revolutionary times of death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

A true story based on the early life of actress, professor and author Maya Angelou. The story traces her life from when she and her brother move in with her mother to the trauma of being raped as a little girl by one of her mother's boyfriends and the several years of silence that came after the attack.

Joe Louis, portraying himself, is a good influence on a group of Harlem youths who are tempted to "go bad" by a gangster known as Caper, an older brother of one of the youths.

James Mink is a black man in Canada who has built a very successful livery business, and enjoys a white wife and a beautiful daughter, Mary. An excellent match is arranged with an American businessman, but when he takes his new wife Mary across the border his true character emerges - he sells her into slavery. James and Elizabeth must go to Virginia to rescue their daughter.

Story of the transition of an African country from colonialism to independence.

A romance in a musical variety show, featuring exotic dancing. Ruby Dee's film debut.

Dr. Maureen Brennan, a psychiatrist at a youth treatment center, encounters her newest patient, a bi-racial boy named America. Through their sessions, Dr. Brennan helps America come to terms with his roller-coaster life, which began when he was taken by authorities from his crack-addicted mother, and placed into foster care as an infant. (imdb)

True story of Ernest Green (Morris Chestnut) and eight other African-American high-school students (dubbed the "Little Rock Nine") as they embark on their historic journey to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

A film about the early life of the baseball star in the army, particulary his court-martial for insubordination regarding segragation.

The Great American Family at its worst. James Tyrone is an aging actor and skinflint whose miserliness has been the ruin of his family. His wife, Mary, has been a morphine addict since the birth of their youngest son, Edmund. Their eldest son, Jamie is an alcoholic, unable an unwilling to find work on his own, he has been 'forced' to take up his father's profession. Edmund, who has been away as a sailor has returned home sick and awaits the doctor's diagnosis of consumption.

An old Jewish shop owner suddenly finds himself responsible for a little black boy trying to escape the chaos of Harlem as part of a sponsorship program. At first, Mr. Shaddick wants nothing more than to get rid of the kid, but to spite the well to do lady who tries to take him over to her home, he decides to take Herman in. As time goes on, he finds himself caring about Herman and has the misfortune of being the bearer of bad news, which reminds him of when he received a telegram himself. (imdb)

Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday integrates film and video performances, recordings, words from her controversial autobiography (read by actress Ruby Dee) and interviews with artists who played with her (pianist Mal Waldron, trumpeter Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison), Milt Gabler (owner of Commodore and a producer at Decca), author Albert Murray and vocalists Carmen McRae and Annie Ross.

The life and times of Lorraine Hansberry, an African-American writer and political activist, whose semi-autobiographical 1957 play "A Raisin in the Sun" became the first show on Broadway authored by an African-American.

A father struggles to protect his daughter from the reality of her mother's drug addiction.

In 2004, historian, writer and musician Scott Allen Nollen, incensed at someone's foolish reference to the great Dooley Wilson as "Dooby," composed this tribute to the African American performers of Hollywood's "Golden Age," and recorded all the instruments for the song under his band name of Jimmie Dynamite.

Tells the story of Sadie and Bessie Delany, two African-American (they preferred "colored") sisters who both lived past the age of 100. They grew up on a North Carolina college campus, the daughters of the first African-American Episcopal bishop, who was born a slave, and a woman with an inter-racial background. With the support of each other and their family, they survived encounters with racism and sexism in their own different ways. Sadie quietly and sweetly broke barriers to become the first

A true story about a concerned housewife, Pat Melancon, who tries to block Shintech, a massive Japanese petrochemical conglomerate, from building a plant in her toxic township already known as "cancer alley". Pat and a few newly recruited, fledgling activists face the full force of Shintech's wealth and influence peddling, which has bought the cooperation of the government from the local level all the way up to the Governor's office.

When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than four million slaves were set free. Over 70 years later, the memories of some 2,000 slave-era survivors were transcribed and preserved by the Library of Congress. These first-person anecdotes, ranging from the brutal to the bittersweet, have been brought to vivid life, featuring the on-camera voices of over a dozen top African-American actors. (imdb)

A journey into the life and work of beat poet and activist Bob Kaufman and his insistence that poetry is fundamental to humanity's moral survival.

U.S. Army training film about avoiding venereal disease, intended primarily for Negro servicemen.

This film adaptation of James Baldwin's celebrated novel tells the journey of a family from the rural South to "big city" Harlem seeking both salvation and understanding and of a young boy struggling to earn the approval of a self-righteous and often unloving stepfather. (imdb)