Movies: Ruby Dee

Louis Gossett Jr. takes viewers through a special documentary celebration of the groundbreaking achievements of African-American performers and their contributions to Hollywood filmmaking. Spectacular film clips, rare behind-the-scenes footage, archi...

When Helene Angel walks home from school with her older brother she is attacked by a street gang and painted white. The effect on Helene and her family is devastating. Helene locks herself in her room, her brother blames himself for not having succes...

A celebration of the life of Zora Neale Hurston, who was born at the turn of the 20th Century and grew to be an important voice with her written portrayals of Black American life in the rural south of the 1930's and 40's, and the stories, songs and f...

Tuesday Morning Ride is based on the short story "A Summer Tragedy" by Arna Bontemps, a Harlem Renaissance writer. Set in the 1930s, the story depicts an old man and woman -- he a stroke victim, she blind -- who feel they have nothing to live for sin...

The story of Abe Saperstein and the creation of the Harlem Globetrotters....

In "America," 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 whe...

In 1963 a group of young Black boys living in Harlem were involved in an incident that earned them the nickname "The Harlem Six." Intent on protecting and clearing the names of their sons, several mothers bonded together to make their story known. Th...

An American musician working in Nigeria becomes involved with a patriot hunted by a mercenary in Africa....

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 ...

A drama which examines the enduring nature of love between a white man and a black woman in 1918 South Carolina....

Panel discussion about the original Broadway production of Lorraine Hansbury's "A Raisin in the Sun."...

Paul Robeson: Here I Stand presents the life and achievements of an extraordinary man. Athlete, singer, and scholar, Robeson was also a charismatic champion of the rights of the poor working man, the disfranchised and people of color. He led a life i...

Politics makes strange bedfellows, but never stranger than when a sexy, savvy, African-American conservative Republican reluctantly falls for his Democratic counterpart: a beautiful Indian-American Obama campaign volunteer. Sparks fly, tempers flare,...

"Papua New Guinea: Anthropology on Trial" was a 1983 episode of the PBS science documentary series NOVA. It explored the field of anthropology, particularly in the context of Papua New Guinea, from the perspective of the people being studied....

This documentary captures the sounds and images of a nearly forgotten era in film history when African American filmmakers and studios created “race movies” exclusively for black audiences. The best of these films attempted to counter the demeaning s...

An interview with film scholar Mia Mask, co-editor of Poitier Revisited....

Over the course of one day in August 1912, the family of retired actor James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of his wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund and the alcoholism and debauchery of their older son Jamie. As day tur...

The Robinson's like to see themselves as liberals. So when their new black neighbours the Kingsbury's move into their apartment block they are invited for drinks but things don't quite go as they imagined it would....

This intimate, uncannily moving documentary profiles Norma Canner, a pioneer in dance movement therapy, who found in dance a way to help people who had been discarded by society. The film traces the evolution of Norma's career from Broadway actress i...

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....