Cicely Tyson

Based on the perennial best seller, Because of Winn Dixie tells the story of a lonely young girl who adopts an orphaned dog she names Winn-Dixie (for the supermarket where she found him). The bond between the girl and her special companion brings together the people in a small Florida town and heals her own troubled relationship with her father. (20th Century Fox)

Filled with a mix of comedy and drama, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is based on the immensely popular play of the same name written by Tyler Perry. (Lions Gate Films)

The film focuses on the war of two gangs in 1930s Harlem for the control of illegal gaming - one headed by black strategic godfather Bumpy Johnson and another by white ruthless hothead Dutch Schultz. Negotiations proposed by white syndicate boss Lucky Luciano never get under way, blood flows and Johnson gets jailed. When Johnson is paroled, he gets the work of enforcer for mighty Stephanie "The Queen" St. Clair. She is also jailed for racketeering and when she leaves she makes him promise "no violence". (imdb)

Based upon Tyler Perry's acclaimed stage production, Madea's Family Reunion continues the adventures of southern matriarch Madea begun in the hit film Diary of a Mad Black Woman. (Lionsgate)

A housewife who is unhappy with her life befriends an old lady in a nursing home and is enthralled by the tales she tells of people she used to know. (imdb)

Set against the backdrop of a 1930s southern speakeasy, Idlewild explores the lives of Percival (Benjamin), the club's shy piano player, and Rooster (Patton), the club's showy lead performer and manager. Idlewild synthesizes drama, music, cinema and style to bring the tale of struggling singers to life. (Universal)

Joe Braxton is an ex-con who has been given a second chance to freedom after violating his probation. He has been hired by a school teacher named Vivian Perry to repair and drive an old school bus and drive a group of Special kids to Ms. Perry's Washington Farm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to give them a new home after The Clarmont Center for Children is shut down by the city... (imdb)

An ex-con moves to L.A. to find work and creates a disturbance by fighting for a position. More importantly he touches the lives of many of his neighbors including an older man dying of cancer, a young married couple whose husband is too proud to accept a lesser position which causes strife with his wife, and a young boy on the verge of getting in trouble with street gangs. (imdb)

Sentimental story centers around a deaf-mute, Singer, and Mick, a teenager who lives in the house where he rents a room. Mick and Singer become friends, though they are separated by Singer's lack of communication ability and Mick's struggle with teenage traumas... (imdb)

When a woman sees her brother who was supposed to have with died along with her son, she naturally becomes suspicious. When he claims to be someone else, she isn't convinced. After tracing the home of the 'brother', she and her husband stumble upon a top secret project. They get too close to the truth and are therefore intercepted... (imdb)

Dave Burke is looking to hire two men to assist him in a bank raid: Earl Slater, an white ex-convict, and Johnny Ingram, a black gambler. Both are reluctant; but Burke arranges for Ingram's creditors to put pressure on him, while Slater feels humiliated by his failure to provide for his girl-friend; they eventually accept. But Slater loathes and despises blacks, and the tensions in the gang rapidly mount. (imdb)

In the 1940s a 40-year-old woman with five healthy children gives birth to a girl with Down's syndrome. (imdb)

The Morgans, a loving and strong family of Black sharecroppers in Louisiana in 1933, face a serious family crisis when the husband and father, Nathan Lee Morgan, is convicted of a petty crime and sent to a prison camp. (imdb)

A pair of peasant children, Mytyl and her brother Tyltyl, are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the Fairy Berylune. On their journey, they are accompanied by the humanized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, Bread, and other entities. (imdb)

Story of a black woman in the South who was born into slavery in the 1850s and lives to become a part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. (imdb)

The Shangri-La tale with a new age/millennial twist. International aid worker, her photographer ex, and greedy villain survive plane crash in Africa and are taken to a utopian city where she learns that she is destined to replace its dying spiritual leader. Believing that she is needed more in the outside world, she leaves, but finally returns to accept her fate, a new love and fulfillment in the hidden city. (imdb)

The journalist nephew of an aging doctor decides to profile his uncle's life on TV. (imdb)

Convinced that he's entitled to a life of fame and fortune, Korean War vet Jerry Shand (Grant Show) returns home to his fiancee (Lori Loughlin) and pursues a lucrative --if unprincipled -- insurance career. But when he meets the elderly client Vesta (Cicely Tyson), she begins to shed light on the destructive path Jerry has chosen to travel. Peter Bogdanovich directs this film set against the backdrop of racial tensions in the American South.

Based on the novel by Gloria Naylor, in which a group of strong-willed women who live in the same rundown housing project located on Brewster Place

Flora became involved with Lincoln. She began to feel used by him, after experiencing him shun and shame her in front of his rich contemporaries. She finally refused to sleep with him anymore, which prompted her sudden eviction from the house. When it was found that she was pregnant with Lincoln's child, his rich family paid her to leave Mississippi to avoid scandal, and never come back. Flora took this offer, and planned to go to Memphis, Tennessee. (Wikipedia)

In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing of a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince the schoolteacher to go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity. (imdb)

From King's beginnings as a Baptist minister in the early 1950s to his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, KING recreates the pivotal events and speeches of King's life in meticulous detail, and many of those who participated in these historical civil-rights milestones appear in the film (including Rosa Parks, Ramsey Clarke, Ossie Davis, and singer Tony Bennett) or served as consultants during production. (Amazon.com)

New York, the city that never sleeps, is trapped in a nightmare of horror and destruction when a massive earthquake rocks the unsuspecting city. Countless lives are lost, families are torn apart, and chaos runs rampant as the mayor and former Fire Chief race to enact a city-wide emergency plan. An incredible story of undying courage in the face of unimaginable human tragedy. (imdb)

Faced with the harsh reality of growing up in the ghetto, 13-year old Benjie turns to heroin to escape. (imdb)

After Washington DC detective Alex Cross is told that a family member has been murdered, he vows to track down the killer. He soon discovers that she was not his first victim and that things are not what they seem. (imdb)

The promise of better race relations and economic prosperity lure a young man from Alabama to the Watts District of Los Angeles in 1965. After landing a job as a messenger for the L.A. Times, he becomes responsible for much of the reporting that won the paper a Pulitzer Prize when a minor traffic arrest by two white officers sets off a week of brutal rioting on August 11, 1965. (cduniverse.com)

Fact-based story about Mitch Snyder (Martin Sheen), a Washington crusader for the homeless, who took their case to Congress. Working for the Community for Creative Non-violence, Snyder became outraged at the number of homeless people who had been dumped on the Washington streets without shelter from mental institutions and other care facilities. His advocacy drew national attention to the "missing persons" that live among us. (imdb)

A young family moves into an historic home in Georgia, only to learn they are not the house's only inhabitants. Soon they find themselves in the presence of a secret rising from underground and threatening to bring down anyone in its path. (imdb)

An intimate look at life in the ghetto: Johnny Williams is a house painter who moonlights as a poet, struggling to financially and emotionally support his cancer-ridden wife Mattie. But times are tough and the poverty-troubled streets are even tougher, and it takes every ounce of Johnny's love and courage for the couple to make it through their strife, finding redemption in the River Niger.

A film about the life and career of the African American abolitionist and slave escape leader, Harriet Tubman.

The story of American track sprinter Wilma Rudolph, who overcame physical handicaps to win three gold medals in the 1960 Olympics.

A famous jazz trumpeter finds himself unable to cope with the problems of everyday life.

A dedicated African-American teacher in an inner-city school in the midwestern United States facing tough odds helps ghetto children to succeed. Meanwhile, she faces an adversarial colleague and a principal who disapproves of her teaching methods. To top it off, some naughty youth regularly mess up the classroom after school to tick the teacher off. We watch as Tyson's character, Marva Collins, manages it all and keeps up both a personal life and her looks.

The story of the civil rights heroine whose refusal to obey racial bus segregation was just one of her acts in her fight for justice.

Reggie has gone through a lot in his life. But he finally has foster parents who want to adopt him. Everything looks good until the mother dies in an accident. Although the idealistic social worker would like to see the father adopt Reggie, her by-the-book supervisor won't allow it. The father is a traveling jazz musician, and that's just not right for the boy.

Carrie Watts begrudgingly lives with her busy, overprotective son, Ludie, and pretentious daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae. No longer able to drive and forbidden to travel alone, she wishes for freedom from the confines of the house and begs her son to take her on a visit to her hometown of Bountiful. When he refuses, Mrs. Watts is undeterred and makes an escape to the local bus station, where she befriends Thelma, a young woman traveling home. (imdb)

A proud man feels that time and younger men threaten his existence after he is forced to take on a young assistant in the factory repair shop that he has run by himself for so long.

Neil Brock is a young social worker in the slums of New York City; his boss is Frieda Hechlinger; and Jane Foster is the office secretary. This dramatic series features stories about child abuse, drug abuse, rip-offs of the welfare system, crime, etc., i.e., all of the problems of the inner city. (imdb)

Oakbridge, a mid-size midwest American city, is the site of a major chemical disaster. At Citichem, the production manager, is forced to shortcut his safety procedures to speed up the production of a highly toxic and volatile chemical. Of course, as expected, an accident occurs. A worker is killed and the town is exposed to calamitous impacts. Cicely Tyson also co-stars as the City Manager who has misgivings about the whole operation.

A retelling of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens

A fourth-year medical student marries a millionaire's daughter, but he insists that they live on the little money that he earns. (imdb)

A celebration of the poet and civil rights activist.

The film is a road movie in which three aging Vietnam-era Navy vets--soft-spoken Doc (Steve Carell), unhinged and unfiltered Sal (Bryan Cranston), and quietly measured Mueller (Laurence Fishburne)--reunite to perform a sacred task: the proper burial of Doc's only child, who has been killed in the early days of the Iraqi invasion. (deadline.com)

Using poetry, songs, and sketches, the basic concept was to salute values such as individuality, tolerance, and happiness with one's identity; a major thematic message is that anyone, whether a boy or a girl, can achieve anything one wants. (Wikipedia)

The hard-working but struggling crew of a shrimp boat discover a sunken treasure. Trouble ensues in this dramatic black-cast production.

Set in the Haiti of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, The Comedians tells the story of a sardonic white hotel owner... (imdb)

Disheartened since her ex-husband's affair, Grace Waters feels restored by a new romance. But when secrets erode her short-lived joy, Grace's vulnerable side turns violent. (imdb)

Follows the life of Clarence Avant, the ultimate, uncensored mentor and behind-the-scenes rainmaker in music, film, TV and politics. (imdb)