Novella Nelson

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.

Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.

A traumatized veteran, unafraid of violence, tracks down missing girls for a living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered—leading to what may be his death trip or his awakening.

A clinically depressed teenager gets a new start after he checks himself into an adult psychiatric ward.

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 innovative, political, and gay. In his personal fight for social equality, this man ensured the Revolution would be televised. The man was Ellis Haizlip. The Revolution was soul!

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

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 her dead husband reincarnated. At first she ignores the child, but his knowledge of her former husband's life is uncanny, leading her to believe that he might be telling the truth.

Ten stories, each inspired by one of the ten commandments.

A terminally ill man falls in love with a woman who has a secret that threatens their time spent together.

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 begins a quest to find the family he never knew.

When a presidential candidate dies unexpectedly in the middle of the campaign, the Democratic party unexpectedly picks a Washington, D.C. alderman as his replacement.

Stephanie collapses in a pool of blood while on a school skiing trip. A doctor discovers that the blood is the after-effects of giving birth. Soon afterward, the body of a newborn baby is found in a toilet, its mouth blocked with toilet paper. Despite Stephanie's insistence that her child was stillborn and that she had no idea that she was pregnant, she is arrested for the murder of the child.

In a blue-collar American town, a group of teens bands together to form the Dandies, a gang of gunslingers led by Dick Dandelion. Following a code of strict pacifism at odds with the fact that they all carry guns, the group eventually lets in Sebastian, the grandson of Dick's childhood nanny, Clarabelle, who fears the other gangs in the area. Dick and company try to protect Clarabelle, but events transpire that push the gang past posturing.

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 covering his college tuition. One day at the station, his ex-fiancé - and one true love - reappears at the pumps after 3 years of silence. Cool discovers that it is 36 hours until her wedding to a local lawyer. As Cool embarks on last-ditch attempts to win her back, he takes on the biggest "role" of his life while also learning the secret to mastering his craft.

Mona is nearly overwhelmed by grief and depression. After her father's death, she's cut herself off: leaving teaching - she now temps as an office assistant, ignoring her mother's calls, talking to herself in mirrors, and rejecting any offered intimacy. She's watched over by comic extraterrestrial beings whom we see as cartoon squiggles. They ensure that random acts bring her connections - with a neighbor boy, his mother, and his surreptitious piano teacher (the lad wants to surprise his mom). She also meets an elevator operator in the building where she temps for Ms. Hadaway, a widow with perfect diction. Can Mona take a few steps on the road to expressing emotion?

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 star Zulu. They are forced into reconciliation when Te flees from LA to his childhood home in Harlem to hide from his enraged record producer, Bull Sharky. As Bull Sharky and his posse move east tracking Te down, Te and Wes must confront their own demons and attempt to work out their differences.

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

Aspiring Florida defense lawyer Kevin Lomax accepts a job at a New York law firm. With the stakes getting higher every case, Kevin quickly learns that his boss has something far more evil planned.

Millionaire industrialist Steven Taylor is a man who has everything but what he craves most: the love and fidelity of his wife. A hugely successful player in the New York financial world, he considers her to be his most treasured acquisition. But she needs more than simply the role of dazzling accessory.

Everybody's favorite stiff is back! Working fools Larry Wilson and Richard Parker have uncovered a dirty, little secret: Their former boss, Bernie Lomax, embezzled $2 million and placed it in a safe deposit box in the Caribbean. Now, the boys are ready to go after the loot, but they can't do it alone -- they need poor Bernie's help. Can the buddies give their ex-boss new life?

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 country. Their marriage of convenience turns into a burden when they must live together to allay the suspicions of the immigration service, as the polar opposites grate on each other's nerves.

A struggling actress in New York City takes a job as a phone sex operator.

Waymon has a great job in real estate and a promising future, but he's also trapped in a loveless longterm relationship. He meets Natalie, a beautiful club-hopping hipster, and quickly falls in love. Realizing he's just not cool enough to attract her on his own, he seeks the help of his friend Bobby, a free-spirited smooth talker who works in the mail room at Waymon's firm and utilizes the predicament as leverage to advance in the company.

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

A museum worker pretends to be an artist in order to impress women. When an attractive assistant director of a SoHo art gallery overhears him, she offers to exhibit his work. He plays along, which leads to a series of complications following his newfound double life. He starts falling in love with the assistant director, but her art critic fiancé grows suspicious.

When a substantial portion of the nation's populace falls victim to a deadly plague, the tyrannical government quarantines them in camps, offering no alternative except death. But a gutsy rebel named Torch sets out to help the afflicted by leading an underground effort to spirit the victims to humane sanctuary.

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 been wrongly accused. Baptiste insinuates himself in Lamont's life and leads him on a journey of discovery. Lamont then finds that acts of conscience can have unforeseen consequences.

Set early during World War II, the film has a lot to say about love, honor, relationships, commitment and power. Keeping their promise to their dying black housekeeper, a white family takes in her teenage mentally-slow son. The movie details the joys and conflicts the family faces as a result of their decision.

As lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn lies dying of AIDS in a private hospital room, ghosts from his past visit him as he reflects on his life and loves.

When her practical joker boyfriend dies, a young woman recalls all the pranks he pulled as she tries to figure out who murdered him.

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 understanding in themselves and one another.

The world of successful New York lawyer Frank Kramer unravels when his daughter, Nicole, is kidnapped. Her abductors, Matty and Ruby, send him on an exhausting odyssey crisscrossing New York City. Every time the phone rings, Frank is forced to comply with the kidnappers' increasingly outrageous demands. Twenty-four hours later, Frank has stolen a quarter of a million dollars from his office, been beaten up in Harlem, and is no closer to his daughter. He has no idea that the kidnappers want more than his money. They want Rachel.

A teen girl struggles to deal with her mother's breast cancer.

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, sexism, economic elitism, and racism. Yvonne Rainer conveys texture through the intercutting of archival footage, video, and film - as well as compositional layering through the film-within-a-film structure, elliptical (and self-referential) fusion of past and present, and the filmmaker's idiosyncratic penchant for superimposed typed text.

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.

Harlem's legendary Cotton Club becomes a hotbed of passion and violence as the lives and loves of entertainers and gangsters collide.

Brooklyn teenager Jeffrey Willis, thoroughly unhappy with his modest homestead, embraces the other-world aspects of his summer job at the posh Flamingo Club. He spurns his father in favor of the patronage of smooth-talking Phil Brody and is seduced by the ample bikini charms of club member Carla Samson. But thanks to a couple of late-summer hard lessons, the teen eventually realizes that family should always come first.

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

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.

Advertising executive, Alex Grier, is fired and is unable to find another position, being over-qualified. His wife, Annabelle, with no experience, is hired by the Freddie Fox agency when she uses her husband's résumé to get the job. He remains at home, raising their three children, coaxing his wife while trying to write the "great American novel."

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. This work emerges as a powerful close up of police brutality, and of power dynamics of 1960's Harlem.

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

A true account of the life of pioneering AIDS doctor James Oleske.

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 or focusing on his career and thereby letting the boy possibly be beaten to death.

A wealthy woman from Manhattan's Upper East Side struggles to deal with her new identity and her sexuality after her husband of 16 years leaves her for a younger woman.

Respected liberal Senator Joe Tynan is asked to to lead the opposition to a Supreme Court appointment. It means losing an old friend and fudging principles to make the necessary deals, as well as further straining his already part-time family life. But it could be a big boost to his career, so he takes it on. Helping him prepare the case is pretty southern researcher Karen Traynor, and their developing relationship further complicates and compromises his life.