Movies: Novella Nelson

On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, one fearless black pioneer reconceived a Harlem Renaissance for a new era, ushering giants and rising stars of black American culture onto the national television stage. He was hip. He was smart. He was inno...

When the bodies of two young boys are discovered in the Harlem River, their mother is the obvious suspect, particularly with her scandalous past. But what appears to be an open-and-shut case soon becomes something much more sinister....

It took Anna 10 years to recover from the death of her husband, Sean, but now she's on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, Joseph, and finally moving on. However, on the night of her engagement party, a young boy named Sean turns up, saying he is he...

Judy Berlin is an aspiring actress whose idealism is at odds with her small suburban community, where a solar eclipse induces town inhabitants (a lonely housewife, a frustrated schoolteacher, and a struggling filmmaker) to search for solace and under...

Reginald "Cool" Coolidge is a struggling actor, fed up with taking stereotypical African American roles and waiting for his big break in a legitimate production. Until this time comes, he works at his mother's boyfriend's gas station to repay him for...

A physician frustrates his family in his fight to prove that an elderly man is not senile....

Estranged since the death of their parents years ago, twin brothers Teshawn and Wesley Tucker have taken radically different paths in life. Wes has become a minister in a Harlem gospel church while Te perpetrates the gangster lifestyle as hip-hop sta...

A sailor prone to violent outbursts is sent to a naval psychiatrist for help. Refusing at first to open up, the young man eventually breaks down and reveals a horrific childhood. Through the guidance of his doctor, he confronts his painful past and b...

A pregnant teen and her younger sister run away from foster homes and kidnap a woman whom they believe can help with the pregnancy....

Brothers Treat and Philip have only had each other since they were kids, when a small-time criminal abruptly upends their routine lives....

Paul Lamont, a corrections officer and law student, leads a comfortable if culturally bankrupt, middle-class existence. Lamont's marriage is already in trouble when he bails out a mysterious Haitian, Jean Baptiste, in the belief that Baptiste has bee...

The lives of a loving husband and wife collide with that of a wealthy hustler....

During a Kwanzaa celebration, a recovering drug addict who now counsels drug users inspires the residents of a Brooklyn housing project to apply the principles of the holiday to combat violence in their neighborhood....

A graduate student's vengeful ex-roommate refuses to let him retrieve an important book that he needs for his dissertation on Charles Dickens....

Urban horticulturalist Brontë Mitchell has her eye on a gorgeous apartment, but the building's board will rent it only to a married couple. Georges Fauré, a waiter from France whose visa is expiring, needs to marry an American woman to stay in the co...

Intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of poetry take us on a journey through the dreamscape of legendary queer poet Nikki Giovanni as she reflects on her life and legacy....

A couple of people steal the daughter of a famous lawyer. Now they want money to give her back, but it's not just the money they want. They want revenge....

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...

Privilege is an intelligently conceived, boldly anarchic, and wickedly insightful exposition on the culturally ingrained and socially divisive malaise of isms that artificially define and characterize empowerment in contemporary society: ageism, sexi...

Brutally abused by his parents, teenage Thomas finds comfort in associating with a film director who is making a documentary about physical child abuse. The two fall in love, and the elder is faced with the decision of either running away with Thomas...