The Black Contribution – Literature and Theater 1978 is a rare documentary highlighting the voices and cultural impact of African American writers and performers during the civil rights era. Introduced by NAACP leader Benjamin Hooks and narrated by Roscoe Lee Brown, the film weaves together dramatic readings, theatrical excerpts, and candid urban street footage. Margaret Walker’s poem For My People is performed alongside scenes of daily Black life in New York City — children playing, families on stoops, open fire hydrants, and the realities of poverty in 1970s neighborhoods. James Baldwin appears in interview footage, while signs for his play The Amen Corner and stage excerpts from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun underscore the powerful presence of Black voices in American theater. With rare shots of Harlem life, literature, and performance, this film documents the enduring contributions of African American artists to U.S. culture and history.
On August 15th, 2006, filmmaker Ryan Dacko set out to get a 30-minute meeting with a major Hollywood producer by running on foot from Syracuse, New York to Hollywood, California.
A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.
Eleven-year-old New York City public school kids journey into the world of ballroom dancing and reveal pieces of themselves and their world along the way.
In New York's 1880s newspaper district, a dedicated journalist manages to set up his own paper. It is an immediate success but attracts increasing opposition from one of the bigger papers and its newspaper heiress owner.
Alma W. Thomas lived a life of firsts: the first Fine Arts graduate of Howard University (1924), the first Black woman to mount a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art (1972), and the first Black woman to have her paintings exhibited in the White House (2009).
Jack Diamond and his sickly brother arrive in prohibition New York as jewelry thieves. After a spell in jail, the coldly ambitious Diamond hits on the idea of stealing from thieves himself and sets about getting close to gangster boss Arnold Rothstein to move in on his booze, girls, gambling, and drugs operations.
Despite Blacks making up only 7% of Madison WI's population, they are leading in so many important areas from education to politics, and are launching so many multi-million dollar projects that people describe this period as a "Black Renaissance.
San Francisco's North Beach in the 50's - A mix of jazz, poetry and art - The Beach recreates the atmosphere that prevailed through first-hand accounts from the actual "players" along with photographs and artwork from that vibrant time.
Popular movie trailers from 1978
These some of the most viewed trailers for movies released in 1978:
Carmen is a beautiful woman working in a business that is dedicated to smuggling. One day, Carmen fights and hurts to a smuggler woman, so a sergeant in the National Guard, José Navarro, stops detain her.
Frontiersman Hawkeye and his blood brother Chingachgook attempt to rescue the daughter of a chief who was captured by raiders from a rival tribe in this adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tale" of 1841.
Nicole, nurse in Grenoble, is raped one night by four men. Deeply scarred, emotionally and physically, she thinks she will never recover from the trauma.
Dead Eye and his gang are terrorizing a small Chinese region. Chan Ling and his group of misfit friends take it upon themselves to stop evildoers by learning the Super Kung Fu style.
Semi-follow up to "The Deadly Triangle" dealing with a sheriff and his deputy in a sleepy ski town involved with a group of urbanites planning a dangerous mountain climb as well as investigating sabotage in a condominium development.