Keith David

Harry Lennix

Kevin Carroll

Tracy Coley

Stephanie Pope

Set in Harlem in 1947, this film is the story of Grandpa Kansas and his jazz band that set out to become world famous only to be thwarted by jealousy and envy - leaving behind shattered dreams and deep regrets. Though made at NYU, this film was produced under Walt Disney / Hollywood Pictures Discretionary Fund Program, and has won the top prize in multiple film competitions by respected institutions, including The Black American Cinema Society, Black Filmmaker Hall of Fame, and the Atlanta / Image Film Festival.

Martha Tilton sings in this Soundies film from 1941, with Slate Brothers, and Ben Pollack and His Orchestra accompanying.

Set in 1980s Melbourne, a disgraced jazz pianist attempts to get back into his former band by sabotaging his replacement.

Louis Jordan's Orchestra perform Jordan Jive. Setting is a canteen, with the orchestra and audience in US military uniform. The Swing Maniacs go through some extremely strenuous acrobatic dancing.

The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.

A cowboy helps a pretty young woman find lost gold.  Restored by the Academy Film Archive with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1985, four middle-aged Yugoslav emigres return to Belgrade for the funeral of Mariana, their beautiful compatriot. They called her Esther, for Esther Williams, she was the coxswain for their four-man rowing team, and they each loved her. They'd last seen her in 1953, when they rowed her across the Adriatic, pregnant, to join her exiled father in Italy. In flashbacks we learn the story of their youthful baptism into sex, smoking, rock and roll (Hey Ba-ba-re-bop), Hollywood and Swedish films, blue jeans on the black market, and their rivalry with Ristic, the Communist Party youth leader for whom they had instant antipathy.

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