Philoxenia is a short documentary highlighting the synergy between the Greek notion of philoxenia ("friend of the stranger") and Southern hospitality, as expressed through Birmingham, Alabama's Greek-owned restaurants. The film features six local favorite restaurants, two historians and, of course, a lot of mouthwatering dishes.
Stories and music of Black artists who relied on an underground travel guide to navigate the injustices of racial segregation while on the road. The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a directory of lodgings, restaurants, and entertainment venues where African Americans were welcomed. Features performances and interviews with vocalists, musicians, activists, historians, and others.
The 2020 U.S. election, January 6 insurrection, and transition of power are recast and retold in a radical transformation of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
An intimate insider’s journey to uncover buried truths and explore how the community in Monroe, Georgia has been impacted by the 1946 quadruple lynching and decades of racial injustice, shattering a code of silence that has distanced neighbor from neighbor for generations.
A slice-of-life documentary following a visually-impaired married couple as they prepare for a trip to the grocery store.
On a road trip through the American South, two close friends experience a major radio malfunction, followed by curious encounters at an Alabama auto repair shop.
Filmed in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, this documentary tells the stories of four twentysomethings who are living their lives under the scrutiny and judgment often faced by those who clash with mainstream gender norms. Lizzy G, Kyta, and Yella Man are lesbian studs, and Ashton is an out trans man. While Lizzy G struggles to overcome abuse from her past, Kyta wants to free herself from her Asian family's expectations about her future. Ashton is navigating the tribulations of transition. And Yella Man? She's just trying to have a good time.
In Tennessee, and across the South, transgender people like Graham and Zeke face a daily struggle in their pursuit of equal protection under the law. From so-called 'bathroom bills' to laws restricting their ability to change their sex on legal documents, not to mention the personal and familial challenges as you transition, life is not easy nor fair for trans folk.
In a small Southern town, a plantation owner is duped into thinking a thief is a kind stranger. To repay the stranger for stopping a robbery, the plantation owner invites him to his home to meet his daughter.
In January of 2016, a dozen members of the Memphis transgender community began meeting for a weekly story circle facilitated by Elaine Blanchard. The program, based on the format of her award winning Prison Stories series, was a time for sharing, healing and enlightenment. Thanks to the generosity of The California Institute for the Contemporary Arts, filmmaker Shelby Fuller Elwood documented their journey. All people have a story to tell, and all people long to be heard, respected and valued for who they are, and what they have experienced in life.
In April 1864, 1,800 Union Army soldiers were attacked along a supply road deep in the muddy forests of South Arkansas. This is the story of those US soldiers, their Confederates attackers, and the battle that ensued during Red River Campaign.
How a group of rebel rock bands including the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd rose up from one of the most marginalised parts of the USA - the Deep South - to conquer the world.
Short opera. A boy falls in love with a girl after an Appalachian prayer meeting, but her father wants her to go to the dance with a local shyster who the father thinks will bail him out of his money troubles instead.
Jimmy is convinced he's found a way to release his inner demons without going against the will of God. He believes that on the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when Jesus is “dead”, our sins are overlooked. Jimmy believes in... DEAD SATURDAY.
In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billy holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic. Written by Excerpted from Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Update
Spotlights the tradition-bearers of Southern foodways, presenting intimate portraits of men and women who grow, prepare and serve Southern food and drink. Examines themes related to foodways, sense of place, civil rights, gender, family dynamics, and diversity in the modern American South.
Helpless to stop a thief from stealing his father’s modest nest egg, Travis grows up blaming himself for his parents’ suicide. Becoming a priest who operates a highway confessional with his ambivalent brother, Michael, he offers sage advice to chosen sinners while raining death on unrepentant thieves. Into the world of this antagonistic duo comes Mary Francis, a deranged young woman with psychopathic tendencies who kills a thief who threatens to expose the decidedly un-holy siblings. Filled with gratitude, Travis invites the woman into their sacred world which begins a chain of carnage-laced events that threaten to destroy the brothers’ bloody, decades-long partnership.
Virginia Tregan returns to her home in the U.S. Deep South from a sojourn in Paris only to discover that her family plantation and its holdings have been lost. She determines to recoup her family's fortune.
Kim lives with his dad, sells weed to skaters, writes poetry, and snorts painkillers to get through the day. One evening, while strolling through the subdivision painted up as his alter ego Shadow Zombie, Kim catches the eye of a registered nurse and part-time clown Brandi. What follows is a brief romance marked by destruction by the very real phantoms emanating from Kim's dead-end present and Brandi's traumatic past. Shooting under near-documentary conditions in and around Lafayette, Louisiana, Jorge Torres-Torres operates peopling his film with a coterie of genuine Acadiana misfits. The merciless and at times unexpectedly poignant observation of Kim's world dares to see through to the human core of a drug addict or clinically depressed clown.
A dispossessed, violent man's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, he descends to the level of a cave dweller and falls deeper into crime and degradation.