Killer of Sheep

An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.

Daughters of the Dust

In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.

Ashes and Embers

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.

Daydream Therapy

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

Penitentiary

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.

Emma Mae

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.

My Brother's Wedding

A young African-American man, living in Los Angeles without direction in his life, reluctantly agrees to be the best man for his brother, an upwardly mobile lawyer.

To Sleep with Anger

An enigmatic drifter from the South comes to visit an old acquaintance who now lives in South-Central LA.

Passing Through

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.

ምርት ሦስት ሺህ ዓመት

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.

Bless Their Little Hearts

Charlie Banks, chronically unemployed, struggles to find dignity and a meaning for life in the impoverished Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts.

Gidget Meets Hondo

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.

La Bête errante

In the Yukon, searching for gold, Hurricane picks up a paper and discovers that the girl back home is planning to marry another man. Abandoning all care, Hurricane is soon embroiled in a fight in which guns play a part. It is then that the true value of one of his companions, Flossie, a girl of the gold-fields, becomes apparent.

Mur

Anacrusa

The end of a friendship between two fellow musicians torn by the harsh realities of adulthood in the Puerto Rican art scene.

Open Fire

Based on real events from 1983; DC Peter Finch is awarded a medal for the courage he showed in arresting a dangerous criminal. Meanwhile transvestite David Martin is released once again from prison - he's provocative and aggressive and, when he's caught again during a burglary, he shoots one of the police officers, leading to a nation wide manhunt. Innocent filmmaker Steven Waldorf is subsequently shot as a suspect by Finch, provoking a national scandal that rocks the police force.

Broken

A teenage girl seeks, under any circumstances, to achieve her dream of being a musician.

The Law Lord

A new government takes power with a drastically reduced majority. But the ambitious young Home Secretary has a plan to bring the legal establishment to heel and bypass Parliament altogether. Anthony Andrews says of writer and barrister John Cooper (who wrote the ITV series The Advocates): "John is writing about a world he knows intimately. It is a most original and exciting screenplay and extremely prescient in view of the current controversies surrounding the judiciary." Producer Simon Passmore Director Jim Goddard

The Lucky Star

In the war-torn Netherlands, a local Jewish boy has vivid escapist fantasies of being in a Hollywood western where good always triumphs.

Criminal

Simon Willerton's suicide in 1990 brought to six the number of young prisoners who hanged themselves in British prisons in just over six months, prompting public debate over conditions in remand prisons like Armley where overcrowding was so severe that no new inmates could be admitted. Simon faced a burglary charge over the theft of a hot-water bottle from an unoccupied flat. Less a hardened criminal than an immature, gawky teenager who never fitted in, Simon and his tragic death inspired this teleplay.