Ganja & Hess
Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film Ganja & Hess is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity.
Good Fight
2,800 American volunteers fought with distinction in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. They returned home after the Loyalist defeat to encounter suspicion as premature anti-fascists. Branded Communist sympathizers, blacklisted for years and unable to get work, many paid dearl…
The Half-Breed
In an attempt to brand himself as a serious actor, the smiling swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks starred in THE HALF-BREED (1916), a Western melodrama written by Anita Loos and directed with flair by Allan Dwan.
Personal Problems
This entirely African American-conceived and produced ensemble drama is the result of a collaboration of a pair of pioneering Black artists: writer Ishmael Reed and filmmaker Bill Gunn, who wrote and directed the underground classic Ganja & Hess and wrote the screenplay for Hal Ashby's The …