Bessie
~Survival began with a song
Overview
The story of legendary blues performer, Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the 1920s and '30s.
Genres
- Drama
- Music
- TV Movie
General Information
Release Date: 2015-05-16
Budget: $0
Revenue: $0
Runtime: 107 min
Recommendations
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
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.
View Details
Hounddog
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
View Details
Cadillac Records
The story of sex, violence, race and rock and roll in 1950s Chicago, and the exciting but turbulent lives of some of America's musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Leonard Chess, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Etta James and Chuck Berry.
View Details
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
View Details
Iron Jawed Angels
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
View Details
Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B
The story of R&B singer and actress Aaliyah; namely, the highs and lows of her career, her romantic pursuits, and the events leading up to her death in 2001 at the age of 22.
View Details
A Dry White Season
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
View Details
Girlfight
Diana Guzman, a troubled Brooklyn teenager, decides to channel her aggression by training to become a boxer, all while keeping it a secret from her father.
View Details
The Safety of Objects
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
View Details
My Brother the Devil
Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.
View Details
Pariah
A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
View Details
Preacher's Kid
Longing to experience more of life, twentysomething preacher's daughter Angie strikes out on her own for the very first time and joins a traveling gospel show.
View Details
Bruised
Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she's coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out
View Details
Beast
MMA legend Patton James, now a commercial fisherman, is pulled back into the cage when his brother is in danger. Reuniting with his old coach Sammy, he commits to one final fight in one championship against the brutal champion Xavier Grau.
View Details
Boxcar Bertha
"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson, a transient woman in Arkansas during the violence-filled Depression of the early '30s, meets up with rabble-rousing union man "Big" Bill Shelly and the two team up to fight the corrupt railroad establishment.
View Details
Sarafina!
A Soweto schoolgirl named Sarafina is galvanized to protest apartheid after her teacher is arrested for her activism, leading her to join the student resistance movement.
View Details
Lucky Them
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
View Details
44 Minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out
After a failed bank robbery, two heavily armed men hold the Los Angeles Police Department at bay for 44 minutes.
View Details
Boys Don't Cry
A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.
View Details
Suburbia
When household tensions and a sense of worthlessness overcome Evan, he finds escape when he clings with the orphans of a throw-away society. The runaways hold on to each other like a family until a tragedy tears them apart.
View Details