6 Movies Starring Joy Bryant

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Tuesday, June 4, 1968: the California presidential primary. As day breaks Robert F. Kennedy arrives at the Ambassador Hotel; he'll campaign, then speak to supporters at midnight. To capture the texture of the late 1960s, we see vignettes at the hotel: a couple marries so he can avoid Vietnam, kitchen staff discuss race and baseball, a man cheats on his wife, another is fired for racism, a retired hotel doorman plays chess in the lobby with an old friend, a campaign strategist's wife needs a pair of black shoes, two campaign staff trip on LSD, a lounge singer is on the downhill slide. Through it all, we see and hear RFK calling for a better society and a better nation.

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Honey Danels is a 22-year-old, sexy, tough-minded, part-black, part-Latina hip-hop dancer in New York's East Harlem who dreams of making it big as a music video choreographer. She teaches hip-hop dancing at a local youth center and encourages the local kids to attend to keep them off the streets and out of trouble. When luck shines on Honey in the form of a famous music video director, named Michael, who casts her in one music video, she's encouraged to make the transition from dancer to choreographer. But Honey's sudden success comes with a price when Michael refuses to take "no" for an answer to his sexual advances and then tries to sabotage her career by blackballing her out of the business.

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Melvin Van Peebles stunned the world for the first time, with his debut feature, The Story of a Three Day Pass. Filmed in France and selected as the French entry in the San Francisco Film Festival, Melvin's film was awarded the top prize. Saying it was controversial would be an understatement. In 1968 for a black man to walk up to the podium and accept the top festival award for a film he had to go abroad to make--now that's how you make your mark. After his comedy, Watermelon Man, Melvin was determined to push the Hollywood boundaries with the groundbreaking, and even more controversial, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. Turned down by every major studio including Columbia, where he had a three-picture deal, Melvin was forced to basically self-finance. Risking everything he had Melvin delivered to the world the first Black Ghetto hero on the big screen--whether they were ready or not! More than 30 years later, history is being fashioned again in the telling of this very tale. Mario Van Peebles, Melvin's son, directs an honest and revealing portrait of his pioneering father. Mario now tells the story of the making of Melvin Van Peebles' landmark 1971 film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, including Melvin's struggles to raise money to fund the film under the guise of creating a black porno film. Melvin had ducked creditors, the unions and had to bail out his camera crew after they were arrested because a white cop decided a bunch of Negroes and hippies couldn't have come by that camera equipment honestly. Despite death threats and temporarily losing sight in one eye, Melvin somehow managed to whip into shape a rag-tag, multi-racial crew and finish the film that would give birth to birth of a new era which was about to explode: Independent Black Cinema.

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A tale of an inner city drug dealer who turns away from crime to pursue his passion, rap music.

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In New York, the drug-addicted Syd is consumed by drink and drugs - missing his girlfriend London, who broke up with him six months ago after a two-year relationship. When Syd finds that London's friends throw a going away party for her, he decides to go to the party without an invitation. But first he meets the banker and drug-dealer, Bateman, in a bar to buy coke, and he invites his new acquaintance to go to the party with him. While locked in the bathroom with Bateman snorting coke and drinking booze, Syd recalls moments of his relationship with London, inclusive that he had never said "I love you" to his girlfriend despite her countless requests. Bateman also "open his heart" under the influence of cocaine and tells his impotence problem to Syd; in the end he convinces Syd to talk to London.

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Follow two couples as they journey from the bar to the bedroom and are eventually put to the test in the real world.