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Business executive Jazmin Carter is known for two things: turning fledgling businesses into profit producers and avoiding Christmas in Harlem, the neighborhood where she grew up.
The true story of infamous crime boss Bumpy Johnson, who in the early 1960s returned from ten years in prison to find the neighborhood he once ruled in shambles. With the streets controlled by the Italian mob, Bumpy must take on the Genovese crime family to regain control.
“Sugar” Ray is the owner of an illegal casino, who contend with the pressures of vicious gangster and corrupt policemen who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organized crime and police corruption in the 1920s, any dastardly trick is fair!
A beautiful black gangster’s moll flees to Harlem with a trunkload of gold after a shootout, unaware that the rest of the gang, and a few other unsavoury characters, are on her trail. A pudgy momma’s boy becomes the object of her affections and the unlikely hero of the tale.
Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air is an only-in-New-York account of Ming, Al, and Antoine Yates, who cohabited in a high-rise social housing apartment at Drew-Hamilton complex in Harlem for several years until 2003, when news of their dwelling caused a public outcry and collective outpouring of disbelief. On the discovery that Ming was a 500-pound pound Tiger and Al a seven-foot alligator, their story took on an astonishing dimension. The film frames Yates’s recollections with a poetic study of Ming and Al, the predators’ presence combined with a text by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, reimagining the circumstances of the wild inside, animal names, strange territories, and human-animal relations.
The Charismatic black nationalist leader Rev Deke O’Malley is trying to sell the people of Harlem a dream. Invest $100 in his company and live in Africa. But cops Gravedigger and Coffin know all about Deke and his fraudulent schemes that take advantage of the poor and the ignorant and can’t wait for a chance to expose him.
In June 2016, a loving family was found shot to death at their suburban home in Northern New Jersey, and discovered by father and husband Josiah Wisper – a brash businessman who owned bars, restaurants and real estate in Harlem, New York.
A coming of age story about five teenagers growing up in Harlem New York in the 1980’s. It is the beginning of a new generation of kids called the “hip hop” generation, which unfortunately was growing up alongside the “crack cocaine” generation. Karon falls into a deep sleep after his graduation in 1985. Having dreams within dreams takes him into a realistic drama along with his potential future in the 1990’s as a drug selling youth. His fast money attitude serves as the detriment to the community and ultimately his best friends become caught in the crossfire of his illicit activity. He awakens back in 1985, realizing the “easy way out” that was offered wasn’t a glorious new beginning, it was the end.
When a young woman meets an aspiring saxophonist in her father’s record shop in 1950s Harlem, their love ignites a sweeping romance that transcends changing times, geography, and professional success.
During the same summer as Woodstock, over 300,000 people attended the Harlem Cultural Festival, celebrating African American music and culture, and promoting Black pride and unity. The footage from the festival sat in a basement, unseen for over 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America’s history lost—until now.
Reality series chronicling the daily operations and staff drama at an African American-owned and operated tattoo shop in Harlem, New York.
Ella Fitzgerald was a 15-year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. Over the next six decades, her sublime voice would transform the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy. JUST ONE OF THOSE THINGS retraces this extraordinary journey.
Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza — PARIS IS BURNING brings it, celebrating the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.
East Side Story takes place in Harlem where there’s a mix of ball players, hustlers, street rappers and even those who dream of making a difference. But deep in the midst of this community, lies a thriving drug world and one man named Moe who wants to own it all. With the help of his crew and the approval of local thugs, Moe eventually finds himself on top of Harlem’s toughest drug scene. But when things start to get more violent and real than he ever imagined, Moe is faced with a choice, either change his life or sell his soul.
The history of New York City’s Apollo Theater in Harlem is given the full treatment.
Lionel Essrog, a private detective living with Tourette syndrome, ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and best friend — a mystery that carries him from the gin-soaked jazz clubs of Harlem to the slums of Brooklyn to the gilded halls of New York’s power brokers.
Two Puerto Rican brothers, Ralphi Matas and Junior, from New York’s Spanish Harlem and the street’s best Salsa dancers, are separated after a tragedy only to reunite years later on opposing sides of gentrification.
In the 1930s, a black postal carrier from Harlem named Victor Green published a book that was part travel guide and part survival guide. It was called The Negro Motorist Green Book, and it helped African-Americans navigate safe passage across America well into the 1960s. Explore some of the segregated nation’s safe havens and notorious “sundown towns” and witness stories of struggle and indignity as well as opportunity and triumph.
JJ, aka John Shaft Jr., may be a cyber security expert with a degree from MIT, but to uncover the truth behind his best friend’s untimely death, he needs an education only his dad can provide. Absent throughout JJ’s youth, the legendary locked-and-loaded John Shaft agrees to help his progeny navigate Harlem’s heroin-infested underbelly.
Following the death of his employer and mentor, Bumpy Johnson, Frank Lucas establishes himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan. He does so by buying heroin directly from the source in South East Asia and he comes up with a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. Based on a true story.
Honey Daniels (Jessica Alba) dreams of making a name for herself as a hip-hop choreographer. When she’s not busy hitting downtown clubs with her friends, she teaches dance classes at a nearby community center in Harlem, N.Y., as a way to keep kids off the streets. Honey thinks she’s hit the jackpot when she meets a hotshot director (David Moscow) who casts her in one of his music videos. But, when he starts demanding sexual favors from her, Honey makes a decision that will change her life.
A Thanksgiving dinner brings a host of family together in a Harlem apartment, where a 24-year-old schoolteacher named Dorothy Gale (Diana Ross) lives with her Aunt Em (Theresa Merritt) and Uncle Henry (Stanley Greene). Extremely introverted, she has, as Aunt Em teases her, “never been south of 125th Street”, and refuses to move out and on with her life.
Ace is an impressionable young man working for a dry cleaning business. His friend, drug dealer Mitch goes to prison. In an unrelated incident, he finds some cocaine in a pants pocket. Soon, Ace finds himself dealing cocaine for Lulu. Via lucky breaks and solid interpersonal skills, Ace moves to the top of the Harlem drug world. Of course, unfaithful employees and/or rivals conspire to bring about Ace’s fall.
Four Harlem friends — Bishop, Q, Steel and Raheem — dabble in petty crime, but they decide to go big by knocking off a convenience store. Bishop, the magnetic leader of the group, has the gun. But Q has different aspirations. He wants to be a DJ and happens to have a gig the night of the robbery. Unfortunately for him, Bishop isn’t willing to take no for answer in a game where everything’s for keeps.
In 1934, the second most lucrative business in New York City was running “the numbers”. When, Madam Queen, the powerful woman who runs the scam in Harlem, is arrested. Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson takes over the business and must resist against the invasion from merciless mobster Dutch Shultz.
A fish-out-of-water comedy about a talented street drummer from Harlem who enrolls in a Southern university, expecting to lead its marching band’s drumline to victory. He initially flounders in his new world, before realizing that it takes more than talent to reach the top.
In the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, the Mafia steps in when a drug dealer quits his partner brother to lead a straight life with his girlfriend.
Set in 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; 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.
A multi-layered satire of race relations in America. Live-action sequences of a prison break bracket the animated story of Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox, who rise to the top of the crime ranks in Harlem by going up against a con-man, a racist cop, and the Mafia.
Tommy Gibbs is a tough kid, raised in the ghetto, who aspires to be a kingpin criminal. As a young boy, his leg is broken by a bad cop on the take, during a payoff gone bad. Nursing his vengeance, he rises to power in Harlem, New York. Angry at the racist society around him, both criminal and straight, he sees the acquisition of power as the solution to his rage.
With the original Hanson Brothers still on the same minor league ice hockey team, the Chiefs are sold to a new owner who gives them a female coach and puts them in a league in which they are to be regularly humiliated by an opposing Harlem Globetrotters-like team.
The true-life story of a Harlem’s notorious Nicky Barnes, a junkie turned multimillionaire drug-lord. Follow his life story from his rough childhood to the last days of his life.
Story of a schoolteacher’s struggle to teach violin to inner-city Harlem kids.
Upon his return from serving a ten-year sentence in prison, reformed gang leader, S. Lance Ingram, struggles to adapt to a changed Harlem. Unable to use the technological skills he acquired in jail, Lance is forced to accept a position delivering meals for a local food bank. It is here that he befriends Ms. Maddy, 75, a past beauty with a irreverent and hardened shell to whom he delivers dinners. Through her, Lance finds hope, relearning the joys of life and living despite the outwardly bedeviled society in which they find themselves.
When RJ (Matt Singletary) returns home to Chicago after an 8 year tour in the army, he quickly finds that the streets he once knew are now eerily similar to the war torn villages and deserts of the Middle East. His Uncle Richard (Harlem Globe Trotter Curley Boo Johnson), who has taken care of him since he was a little boy, explains the rules of the urban battleground – Don’t go out at night, gangs, drugs and money rule these streets, and Trust no one.Is there any way to stop the cycle of violence? To push the gangs out? To save our children?This modern day retelling of the Robin Hood Legend amps up the action and heroism. All while taking a look at what’s really wrong in the neighborhoods of Chicago.RJ is an arrow slinging savior of the city. Along with Father Benjamin Tuck (Malik Yoba), Marian (Mahogany Monae), his childhood love who now runs the community center, and his comrades in arms from the army, RJ and his crew are out to stop the drug trade and gangland war that’s spread …
Seeking a better life for herself, 15-year-old Venus breaks away from her Spanish Harlem neighborhood and gets caught up in a world of violence and crime. While on the run, she meets a cop whose father-figure role may save the troubled youngster.
After a run-in with local thugs, aspiring Harlem rapper Rob flees to a place and father he never knew, and finds his salvation in Reggaeton, a spicy blend of hip-hop, reggae and Latin beats. Puerto Rico, the spiritual home of Reggaeton, inspires Rob and his step-brother Javi to pursue their dream of becoming Reggaeton stars. Together with a dancer named C.C., they learn what it means to stay true to themselves and each other, while overcoming obstacles in love, greed and pride, all culminating in an explosive performance at New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade.
A beautiful Puerto Rican girl and her family in Spanish harlem devise a novel plan to attract business to their restaurant, causing a wildly comic sequence of events ending in near disaster.
