Notes Towards an African Orestes

A young girl overcomes her disadvantaged upbringing in the slums of Uganda to become a Chess master.

Born on a sharecropping plantation in Northern Florida, Ray Charles went blind at seven. Inspired by a fiercely independent mom who insisted he make his own way, He found his calling and his gift behind a piano keyboard. Touring across the Southern musical circuit, the soulful singer gained a reputation and then exploded with worldwide fame when he pioneered coupling gospel and country together.

With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. It features interviews with some of the genre's biggest stars, like Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, and Richard Roundtree. Director Melvin Van Peebles discusses the historical importance of his landmark film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. For a contemporary perspective, the excitable Quentin Tarantino offers his spirited commentary and author/critic bell hooks provides some scholarly social analysis.

Young Scottish doctor, Nicholas Garrigan decides it's time for an adventure after he finishes his formal education, so he decides to try his luck in Uganda, and arrives during the downfall of President Obote. General Idi Amin comes to power and asks Garrigan to become his personal doctor.

Tensions rise when the trailblazing Mother of the Blues and her band gather at a Chicago recording studio in 1927. Adapted from August Wilson's play.

An exploration of the life and music of Miles Davis.

Gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin helps Martin Luther King Jr. and others organize the 1963 March on Washington.

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.

An African-American prison psychiatrist finds the boundaries of his professionalism sorely tested when he must counsel a disturbed inmate with bigoted Nazi tendencies.

The rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom.

Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda, twentysomething Mina finds herself helping to run a motel in the faraway land of Mississippi. It's there that a passionate romance with the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius challenges the prejudices of their conservative families and exposes the rifts between the region's Indian and African American communities.

An exhilarating, provocative motion picture. The Rolling Stones rehearse their latest song, "Sympathy For the Devil," in a London studio. Beginning as a ballad, the track gradually acquires a pulsating groove, which gets Jagger into a rousing vocal display of soulful emotion that Godard captures on film.

A quiet painter, separated from his wife for a year, receives a suitcase in the mail from his mother, whom he hasn't seen since infancy. He believes she abandoned him to his wealthy, paternal grandparents. The suitcase contains mementos and a diary, a long letter to him, written over the years, with details of her youth, her first job as a pianist at a cinema, the coming of talkies, her marriage, and how he came to live with his grandparents. As he reads through the materials and her story comes to life, his son Antoine, who's about 10 or 12, tries to break through his father's silence and sorrow by taking matters into his own hands.

In this 1957 biography film of the jazz-great Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, he and his band tour the world as American good-will ambassadors bring jazz at its best to the people of the world. Within the film, the life of Louis Armstrong is portrayed through the music. One of the outstanding scenes in this "biography/docudrama" shows blind songwriter W. C. Handy, with tears streaming down his face, as Armstrong, backed by Leonard Bernstein leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, play Handy's immortal "St. Louis Blues."

This lively film is an unforgettable portrait of legendary vocalist Betty Carter, one of the greatest living exponents of jazz. Uncompromised by commercialism throughout her long career, she has forged alternative criteria for success — including founding her own recording company and raising her two sons as a single parent. Parkerson's special film captures Carter's musical genius, her paradoxical relationship with the public and her fierce dedication to personal and artistic independence.

Set in Chicago, the show follows the kid-friendly misadventures of two high-school friends who are always scheming and dreaming. Kenan, who works at a grocery store, constantly devises crazy plans to strike it rich, while orange-soda-loving buddy Kel is always dragged along for the ride despite his track record for messing things up.

Mannix is an American television detective series that ran from 1967 through 1975 on CBS. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller, the title character, Joe Mannix, is a private investigator. He is played by Mike Connors. Mannix was the last series produced by Desilu Productions.

The Mod Squad was the enormously successful groundbreaking "hippie" undercover cop show that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968, until August 23, 1973. It starred Michael Cole as Pete Cochren, Peggy Lipton as Julie Barnes, Clarence Williams III as Linc Hayes, and Tige Andrews as Captain Adam Greer. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and Danny Thomas. The iconic counter-culture police series earned six Emmy nominations, four Golden Globe nominations plus one win for Peggy Lipton, one Directors Guild of America award, and four Logies. In 1997 the episode "Mother of Sorrow" was ranked #95 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

Tremé takes its name from a neighborhood of New Orleans and portrays life in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane. Beginning three months after Hurricane Katrina, the residents of New Orleans, including musicians, chefs, Mardi Gras Indians, and other New Orleanians struggle to rebuild their lives, their homes and their unique culture.

The personal and political struggles, setbacks and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. Civil Rights movement from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to the once unfathomable successes of today. The period piece tells the history of the gay rights movement, starting with the Stonewall Riots in 1969.

Whoopi was an American situation comedy, starring Whoopi Goldberg. The series revolved around the events and people at her hotel, the Lamont Hotel, in New York City. The show aired on Tuesdays from September 9, 2003, on NBC to April 20, 2004.

Five years after leaving the CIA to open a catering company, Steven and Samantha Bloom are recruited back into the agency by Carlton Shaw. They take on special missions the average agent cannot handle. Having made a pact to never discuss their pasts with each other, the Blooms find surprising new things about their spouse in the course of each mission.

Four-part series demonstrating different kinds of censorship, such as censorship by the government or of art.

Imaginative boy Ben transforms his city by bringing colorful street art to life, armed with a magic paintbrush -- and the classic sounds of Motown.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard's chair of Afro-American Studies, travels the length and breadth of the United States to take the temperature of black America at the start of the new century. He explores this rich and diverse landscape, social as well as geographic, and meets the people who are defining black America, from the most famous and influential to those at the grassroots.

A single mother tries to dodge her troubled past by relocating to another city with her defiant teenager, only to discover there are forces that cannot be outrun.

Muhammad Ali brings to life the iconic heavyweight boxing champion who became an inspiration to people everywhere.

A coming of age story set in the late 1960s that takes a nostalgic look at a black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama through the point-of-view of imaginative 12 year-old Dean. With the wisdom of his adult years, Dean’s hopeful and humorous recollections show how his family found their “wonder years” in a turbulent time. Inspired by the classic series of the same name.

Caroline Randall Williams, an award-winning writer, cookbook author and restaurateur, travels the United States uncovering the fascinating, essential and often untold black stories behind American food.

James Earl Jones hosts an interview and performance series exclusively for African-American musicians, comedians, and performers.