Directed by Kelley Kali, Angelique Molina • Drama • With Wesley Moss, Kelley Kali • 2021 • 86 minutes
This is post-pandemic America and everyone is struggling to get by. In this exhilarating debut feature Danny, played by co-director Kelley Kali in a star-making performance alongside Deon Cole, is a recently widowed woman who barely makes ends meet by braiding hair and making deliveries on roller skates. Having convinced her 8 year old daughter they are 'camping out’ in a tent for fun (in a nod to “Life is Beautiful”), she manages to save enough money for a downpayment on a new apartment. When a client is unable to pay her, she realizes that if she can’t raise $200 by day’s end she will lose the apartment and have to admit to her daughter that they are actually “houseless". What follows is an intense, manic and frayed day until the final reckoning. In a world where we need more underrepresented voices telling their own stories, this movie hits the mark. Equal turns funny and heart wrenching, this is a soaring, urgent achievement that announces the co-directors, co-writers, and leading cast as major forces in a work that will have audiences cheering.
Up Next in Black Lives
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Fannie's Film
Directed by Fronza Woods • Documentary • 1981 • 15 minutes
In FANNIE'S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes o...
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Ornette: Made in America
Directed by Shirley Clarke • Documentary • With Ornette Coleman, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer • 1985 • 85 minutes
Returning in 1983 to his home in Fort Worth, Texas, documentary footage and dramatic scenes recall legendar...
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Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed
Directed by Shola Lynch • Documentary • With Shirley Chisholm, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, Bobby Seale • 2004 • 77 minutes
Recalling a watershed event in US politics, this compelling documentary takes an in-depth look at the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman...
