Essential Black Cinema

Lee’s darkly humorous story of racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Created much controversy at time of release!

Set on the steamy streets of Philadelphia during the summer of 1976, NIGHT CATCHES US follows Marcus (Mackie), an ex-Black Panther who returns home to confront his past. But when his path crosses Patricia (Washington) who has tried to move on from their shared history, sparks fly.

Set in 1940’s Los Angeles. A reluctant private eye, hired to look for a mysterious woman, finds himself the target of a corrupt politician. Elegant period piece.

Everybody is cleaning up and getting down in this classic comedy – the first “disco slacker” movie from the decade that brought you the tube top, the polyester suit and lots of good times. It’s just a typical day in the lives of the employees, customers and passersby of a Los Angeles car wash – but what a day! There’s a would-be robbery… an assembly line of the weirdest, baddest, shadiest characters you’ve ever met… and lots of booty-bumping music to pass the hours till quitting time. Featuring outrageously hilarious performances by George Carlin, “Professor” Irwin Corey, The Pointer Sisters, and Richard Pryor as Daddy Rich, a flamboyant Reverend who preaches the goodness of the dollar, Car Wash is a timeless classic celebrating an era devoted to living life in the fast lane.

A young urbanite deals with her boyfriend’s violent death by wrapping herself up in her poetry. Jackson’s film debut!

Coming in on the tail end of a rhythm and blues singing group explosion, The Five Heartbeats (Robert Townsend, Michael Wright, Leon, Harry J. Lennix, Tico Wells) rise and fall within the space of seven years. Along the way, the group deals with all manner of fame and fortune distractions — jealousy, greed, too much womanizing and drugs all take a toll. Their troubles culminate when executive Big Red (Hawthorne James) is arrested for the murder of manager Jimmy Potter (Chuck Patterson).

Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and the horror cinema, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film GANJA & HESS is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity. Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead) stars as anthropologist Hess Green, who is stabbed with an ancient ceremonial dagger by his unstable assistant (director Bill Gunn), endowing him with the blessing of immortality, and the curse of an unquenchable thirst for blood.

Get together. Fall apart. Start over. Chemical attraction and something more keep drawing an aspiring novelist and aspiring photographer back together. Critically acclaimed.

An urban thriller that follows an ambitious upstart street hustler on a desperate quest for money, power and respect, and his best friend, who is equally determined to turn his criminal life around. Features an all-star cast of multiplatinum rap artists. Vividly captures the desperate forces driving today’s urban youth culture.

Quincy McCall (Epps) and Monica Wright (Lathan) are two next-door neighbors in Los Angeles, California who are pursuing their basketball careers before eventually falling for each other.