
Set in Harlem in 1947, this film is the story of Grandpa Kansas and his jazz band that set out to become world famous only to be thwarted by jealousy and envy - leaving behind shattered dreams and deep regrets. Though made at NYU, this film was produced under Walt Disney / Hollywood Pictures Discretionary Fund Program, and has won the top prize in multiple film competitions by respected institutions, including The Black American Cinema Society, Black Filmmaker Hall of Fame, and the Atlanta / Image Film Festival.




Peek-Hole
Daisy
7.2A group of prisoners are encouraged to form a jazz band and vow to go straight when they are released to tour the country. However, the trumpets and clarinets are just a cover for a series of robberies. Musical comedy, starring British jazz star Acker Bilk as himself, alongside Jimmy Thompson and Jennifer Jayne.
0.0Harlem, 1943. Sonny is a struggling African American who frequents the bingo parlor in a desperate attempt to provide for his family in post-Depression era New York.
5.3A revisionist twist on Cinderella with an all-black cast and set in Harlem during WWII. Cindy is a country bumpkin who moves from South Carolina to live with her father and his new family. When her stepmother and two stepsisters refuse to take her to the Sugar Hill Ball, her draft-dodging, chauffeur neighbor whips up a little "magic" and at the ball she catches the eye of the richest man in Harlem.
6.1'Sugar' Ray is the owner of an illegal casino and must contend with the pressure of vicious gangsters and corrupt police who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organised crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair.
6.7Uncle Drew recruits a squad of older basketball players to return to the court to compete in a tournament.
6.5A timid, nearsighted chemistry teacher discovers a magical potion that can transform him into a suave and handsome Romeo. The Jekyll and Hyde game works well enough until the concoction starts to wear off at the most embarrassing times.
1.0An African-American GI retires from the US Army in West Berlin to live with his white girlfriend, who already has a baby with another black man. After an argument with her family, she deserts him as well. Despite finding a job and a new place to live, he keeps running into racism, which also manifests itself in sexual intimidation.
6.5Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.
10.0Harlem Fragments is an Afro-futurist scrapbook storytelling of a Harlem Black family's beautiful destruction during the 2008 recession. A natural disaster so mesmerizing you can't look away from the tragedy. Based on true events- The film explores the haunting societal pressures of achieving the Black American dream, told in the POV of 10 year old TJ revisiting his family's home that's up for sale. By empowering this Black boy in this film with the agency to imagine, TJ, through his own journey, finds a way to process and come to terms with his family's divorce. It's important for every Black child out there enduring the same foreign emotions to know that it's okay to feel them, and affirm that there is a future trajectory forward out of the initial destruction.
4.6Flea was a basketball player, happy with his subtle hustle, until a Dominican connect introduced him to a new way to spread the work and make money.
6.5A young man searches for the "master" to obtain the final level of martial arts mastery known as the glow. Along the way he must fight an evil martial arts expert and rescue a beautiful singer from an obsessed music promoter.
7.3In Harlem in 1987, Claireece "Precious" Jones is a 16-year-old African American girl born into a life no one would want. She's pregnant for the second time by her absent father, and at home she must wait hand and foot on her mother, an angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is chaotic and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and a secret – she can't read.
6.2A struggling band find themselves attached to a fugitive and drawn into a series of old feuds and love affairs, as they try to stay together and find musical success.
5.8Danny O'Neill and Hank Taylor are rival trumpeters with the Perennials, a college band, and both men are still attending college by failing their exams seven years in a row. In the midst of a performance, Danny spies Ellen Miller who ends up being made band manager. Both men compete for her affections while trying to get the other one fired.
6.7After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.
6.9Chronicles the rise and fall of legendary blues singer Billie Holiday, beginning with her traumatic youth. The story depicts her early attempts at a singing career and her eventual rise to stardom, as well as her difficult relationship with Louis McKay, her boyfriend and manager. Casting a shadow over even Holiday's brightest moments is the vocalist's severe drug addiction, which threatens to end both her career and her life.
6.1Dorothy Gale, a shy kindergarten teacher, is swept away to the magic land of Oz where she embarks on a quest to return home.
7.4Three sisters start out singing in their church choir in Harlem in the late 1950s and become a successful girl group in the 1960s.
5.0A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold. Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
