A fascinating account of the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who was both one of America's great presidents and a borderline tyrant. The seventh president shook up the glossy world of Washington, DC with his "common-man" methods and ideals, but also oversaw one of the most controversial events in American history: the forced removal of Indian tribes, including the Cherokees, from their homes.
A man who wants to move on with his life by moving to California and marry his girlfriend, finds it difficult as he still lives in the towering shadow of his aging father.
A substantial insurance payment could mean either financial salvation or personal ruin for a poor black family.
A young paraplegic wants to escape the bonds of gravity by going into outer space.
Arthur is asked to pick up a bird for Thanksgiving dinner, so he brings home a 266-pound chicken named Henrietta. The family welcome her with open arms, but the neighbors are not so sure and then Henrietta escapes.
The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.
Gallo Morales is the proud patriach returning home after a seven-year stint for manslaughter. Seeking to re-establish his legendary status as a champion breeder, he comes back for the rooster bred by his father. But it is Hector, his son who inherits the prize-winning bird and neither are about to give in. The fall-out from their conflict has consequences for the whole family, especially for Angela, the sensitive 14-year-old daughter unable to cope with the brutal world that surrounds her and her own emerging womanhood, despite the best efforts of Juana, her strong but long-suffering mother.
Racial tensions come out of the woodwork when an upper-class white couple puts their suburban home on the market and the listing draws a pair of equally well-to-do African American buyers from Harlem. Fielder Cook directs this Broadway staging of playwright Arkady Leokum's exploration of lingering racial prejudice in 1970s America.
The Old Settler is the story of two middle-aged sisters, Elizabeth and Quilly, who share an apartment in Harlem in 1943. The sisters quarrel amiably, but they share a wounded history that becomes revealed as the tale unfolds. An earnest but unworldly young man named Husband travels up from the South to board with the sisters while he searches for his beloved Lou Bessie, who left their small town a few years back to find a new life. Husband would like to bring Lou Bessie back home, but she's enamored with the excitement of the city, and her plans are more complicated. In time, Elizabeth and Husband begin a courtship that may or may not overcome their considerable age difference, while Quilly reacts disapprovingly.
Originally broadcast by KCET (PBS) on their dramatic showcase series, "Visions," this sweet, quiet film is set during World War I. It is the story of Amy, a proper, but lonely housewife whose husband is away at war. She finds solace in a friendship with a more worldly female photographer, only to have her entire world turned upside down when the friendship becomes genuine love and she is forced to choose. Groundbreaking for its powerful yet non-prurient portrayal of lesbian first love.
A penniless heiress, a disillusioned nun, the suicidal playwright they both love, a hapless art forger and the playwright's wife converge on the empty Long Island home of an aging matriarch and squabble among themselves about their relative success or failure.
The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.
This musical adaptation of the Studs Terkel book examines the average worker's viewpoint--showing that he or she is anything but average. Based on a series of interviews with real working people--construction workers, waitresses, firemen, secretaries, and cleaning women, Working is both an exploration of the individuals' occupations and a lament for lost hopes and dreams.
An anthology film consisting of four shorts with the central theme being life in the United States.
Baba Goya is a loudmouth mother who goes through husbands and orphans like the Turkish coffee she makes in a dirty old soup pan. In Queens she presides over a household comprised of a childish orphan who happens to be a cop, an elderly gentleman who explodes every time somebody calls him grandpa, a dying husband and an errant daughter who cries all night. The husband, Baba's fifth, is already submitting an ad for her sixth. The cop catches a Japanese stealing cameras and chains him to a radiator, the daughter guiltily confesses she voted for Nixon and runs off, and the husband-who may not die after all-insists they must wait out Watergate for a Democrat.
The time was 1938. The place, Hollywood. This is the story of one of the 456 films made that year, how it was made, and why it has endured.
A novel portrait of author Ernest Hemingway, in which four versions of the man from different points of his life exist simultaneously.
Is a sensitive and mysterious poet really an IRA gunman in hiding? Set in a Dublin tenement in the 1920s, this was the first part of Sean O'Casey's celebrated "Dublin Trilogy." Equal parts comedy and tragedy, this classic play is brilliantly performed by a stellar cast.
Set in Ancient Greece, a street clown Cockian is hired by a Roman Commander to impersonate an imprisoned Christian leader in order to learn the group's secrets, but the clown begins to take his role to heart.
This film explores how iconic Nevada Senator Harry Reid set the foundations for a green new deal.
