Roger Guenveur Smith
When money, affairs, power and lies collide, Nicole Wright, a beautiful and successful music CEOs life is about to crumble in front of her. While leaving her husband and son, the lies that have built her music empire is threatening to tear her down. While having an affair with Kingston, the sexy artist on the rise who promises her everything, Nicole learns the hard way that looks can be deceiving and his motives are as dark as the secrets she keeps.
When his wife and daughter are senselessly murdered, a grieving man finds himself caught up in a war between a group of charismatic vigilantes and the crime that infests their city.
The police shooting of an unarmed black teen causes friction within a mixed-race Los Angeles family. Ivan, the youngest sibling, is stalked by visions of Jimmy Keene’s floating corpse. Torn between the opposing worldviews of his two older sisters, Ivan searches for his voice while the family divisions heighten after the parents take sides.
A man must fight for his fiancée's affection, after her old college friend visits with plans of rekindling more than just a friendship.
15 minutes of fame destroys the life of a man who works as a clapper in television.
On her 60th birthday, the proud owner of a Los Angeles strip club, finds herself in hot water over a twenty-five year old debt to the mob, leading her on a downward spiral of violence and revenge through the underbelly of Los Angeles.
Behind the Movement is a unique and fast-paced retelling of how Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat launched the history-making Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Charlie, a down-on-his-luck loner, crosses paths with a blind homeless man who is his exact double. Perplexed and intrigued by the discovery, Charlie invites the man into his life.
Estranged siblings Marcus and Michelle Brinks are reunited after the sudden death of their parents, two globe-trotting aid workers who they barely knew. In the days following the wake, the siblings can't help but turn their current lives and relationships into chaos as they're forced to reckon with their shared past.
25 years ago, four LAPD officers were acquitted in a state court for beating King, sparking three days of rioting that left 53 people dead. Now, around the anniversary, this Spike Lee-produced one-man show (Roger Guenver Smith) will be streaming on Netflix. A complex, semi-tragic figure, King drowned in 2012. His life was rarely smooth, or simple – its telling makes for a sober, moving watch.
The provocative tale of a woman who snaps under crushing life pressures and assumes the psyche of a vicious dog. Her philandering, absentee husband is forced to become reacquainted with his four children and sister-in-law as they attempt to keep the family together during this bizarre crisis.
Pierre Bismuth hires a private detective and a duo of screenwriters to investigate on an enigmatic artwork. He classifies this film under the new found genre 'Fake Fiction'.
Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.
A young girl from the Brooklyn housing projects goes from the subway to the runway becoming one of the most sought after models in the fashion industry. But in the high stakes world of fashion and beauty. Things aren't always as pretty and glamorous as they seem.
Malcolm is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews, and the SAT. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself.
The film follows warring political factions in 1970s Jamaica as they enlist the support of gangs to enforce their policies, and advance their political agenda. It is a fictionalized dramatization of real historical events, specifically, the Green Bay Massacre, where the government finally tracked down these gangs and had systematically wiped out.
After failing to get into the police academy, Chris Potamitis settles for a security guard job with an armoured truck company. After he makes the mistake of mentioning the company's lax security to his best friend, He's unwittingly drawn into an elaborate scheme to rob the abundant amounts of cash being stored on their premises—resulting in the largest cash heist in U.S.history.
Four outlaws with a bounty on each head, set a date for a shootout in Langston, Oklahoma. The last man takes the collective bounty. Violence and mayhem ensue.
A rookie cop is assigned to the 118 Precinct in the same district where he grew up. The Precinct Captain starts receiving letters about two unsolved murders that happened many years ago in the housing projects when the rookie cop was just a kid. These letters bring back bad memories and old secrets that begin to threaten his career and break up his family.
Tony Smalls is a burned out lawyer looking for a new direction in life. He's forced to put his plans on hold when his sister Nia asks him to defend her fiance', a gang kingpin who is under arrest for a triple murder that he says he didn't commit. Tony feels the pressure of the case when the feds and a shadowy corporation get involved, along with a private investigator who seems to be working all sides. When Nia starts an investigation of her own into the murder, it not only brings her closer to the truth - it puts both herself and Tony in harm's way.
Business becomes unusual for an unsuspecting hitman who senses that he's been witnessed murdering his traitorous mentor by a 9 year old boy.
In this documentary directed by Spike Lee, he interviews the cast and crew of his 1989 film DO THE RIGHT THING. It also includes footage from a twentieth-anniversary screening of the film.
Small-town boy Shawn MacArthur has come to New York City with nothing. Barely earning a living selling counterfeit goods on the streets, his luck changes when scam artist Harvey Boarden sees that he has a natural talent for streetfighting. When Harvey offers Shawn help at making the real cash, the two form an uneasy partnership.
Following the death of his employer and mentor, Bumpy Johnson, Frank Lucas establishes himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan. He does so by buying heroin directly from the source in South East Asia and he comes up with a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. Partly based on a true story.
When someone is murdered on New Year's Eve, the prime suspect is Valerie Maas, a church-going home-maker whose life unravels when she discovers that her husband of many years has been leading a double life. Her strength of character and faith keep her going as the revelation of her husband's betrayal threatens to destroy all that they have known.
Three generations of one family, all involved at different levels with the Puerto Rican underground movement for independence, struggle with their need for identity and their need for a peaceful life, as the dying revolutionary movement struggles with new ideas and old ideals.
First-class assassin Lee Choe has spent years working for the mob. When his handler turns on him by killing his girlfriend and framing him for the murder, Lee stops at nothing to seek revenge. He fights back with a vengeance and violently punishes those who played a part in the death of his innocent love.
Confessions of a Call Girl is a revealing story of a women's struggle for balance as she battles a secret addiction while fighting to save her family and find herself.
Mercenary John Seeger is one of the best in the business. John and his crew battle some soldiers on Galmoral Island in Southern Africa as they're trying to rescue the French Ambassador -- there's a coup going on. Some of John's soldiers unload their machine guns into the Ambassador and his family, blowing the mission and getting his best friend Radio Jones killed. He heads back to the US and visits Radio's wife Shondra to tells her the news, and then promises that he'll take care of her and her son Eddie. But shortly after he makes that vow, Shondra and Eddie get kidnapped.
Public defender Carter (Roger Smith) has had all he can take dealing with a corrupt judicial system. Over the objections of his wife, Sharice (Monica Calhoun), he quits his job, opens an inner-city law office and organizes a group of activists out to change the system. In a moment of truth, Sharice must decide whether she'll stay with her husband and fight the good fight or move to the suburbs with their two young children.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, more than four million slaves were set free. Over 70 years later, the memories of some 2,000 slave-era survivors were transcribed and preserved by the Library of Congress. These first-person anecdotes, ranging from the brutal to the bittersweet, have been brought to vivid life in this unique HBO documentary special, featuring the on-camera voices of over a dozen top African-American actors.
Tiffany, Charlie and Vernon are con artists looking to up the ante from their typical scams. They figure a good way of doing this is taking down Dean "The Dean" Stevens, a well-known cardsharp, in a rigged game. However, they first need enough money to enter a game with Stevens, so they decide to strike a deal with fellow crook Larry Jennings to scam a local gangster -- which turns out to be a bad idea.
Bucum Jackson (Cube) is a bounty hunter with a lot of attitude and no interest in taking on a partner. Working at Martinez Bail Bonds, Jackson has unorthodox methods of tracking down low-life criminals, but they work, and one day he hopes to become his own boss and open up his own private investigation firm. Reggie Wright (Epps) is a slippery con artist who is avoiding the law, and Jackson. During a cat and mouse chase, the two stumble on a multi-million dollar diamond heist. Hiding from Jackson, Wright finds himself in the thieves' getaway van and ends up having to escape from them after they discover their booty is fake, much to the displeasure of their ruthless boss (Flanagan). When Wright meets up with his girlfriend (Mendes), he discovers that his recently purchased lottery ticket is the sole winner of $60 million. Unfortunately, his wallet, which held the ticket, was left in the thieves' van, so he persuades Jackson to help him get it back.
A Huey P. Newton Story is a 2001 film directed by Spike Lee. It is a filmed performance of Roger Guenveur Smith's one-man show of the same name. Smith sits in a chair on a stage and tells about the past, mostly dealing with Huey P. Newton's life and times.
After a teenager has a terrifying vision of him and his friends dying in a plane crash, he prevents the accident only to have Death hunt them down, one by one.
Based on the landmark civil rights case Sipes vs. McGhee, The Color of Courage chronicles the friendship between a white woman and a black woman whose family, the McGhees, has moved into a previously all-white neighborhood. A McGhee granddaughter, Kathleen McGhee-Anderson, wrote the script.
Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American South Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.
A basketball player's father must try to convince him to go to a college so he can get a shorter sentence.
Summer heats up in rural Louisiana beside Eve’s Bayou, 1962, as the Batiste family tries to survive the secrets they’ve kept and the betrayals they’ve endured.
Several Black men take a cross-country bus trip to attend the Million Man March in Washington, DC in 1995. On the bus are an eclectic set of characters including a laid-off aircraft worker, a man whose at-risk son is handcuffed to him, a black Republican, a former gangsta, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, and a white bus driver. All make the trek discussing issues surrounding the march, including manhood, religion, politics, and race.
Dramatizes some of the more tawdry events in the relationship between O.J. Simpson and his wife, Nicole Brown, up to and including his arrest for Brown's murder.
A strange funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.
In the tradition of The Twilight Zone, this bizarre, thought-provoking trilogy addresses the destiny of the world's minorities: Part I: A conservative African American politician must choose between his people's survival and appeasing his white colleagues when space aliens propose to share their profound knowledge in exchange for all black people on earth. Part II: The Virgin Mary's appearance in an inner-city housing project forces a Hispanic priest to face the hidden cultural origins of Western religion. Part III: On the dawn of the "Black Revolution," an African American couple discovers who the "real" enemy is.
In this film, we see the world through the eyes of main character Justice, a young African-American poet. A mail carrier invites a few friends along for a long overnight delivery run.
The black policeman Russell Stevens applies for a special anti-drug squad which targets the highest boss of cocaine delivery to LA: the Colombian foreign minister's nephew. Russell works his way up from the bottom undercover, until he reaches the boss. The first step is to get the lawyer and hobby dealer David Jason to trust him.
A tribute to the controversial black activist and leader of the struggle for black liberation. He hit bottom during his imprisonment in the '50s, he became a Black Muslim and then a leader in the Nation of Islam. His assassination in 1965 left a legacy of self-determination and racial pride.
A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York's poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.
Salvatore "Sal" Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
Fraternity and sorority members clash with other students at a historically black college during homecoming weekend.
An enterprising ex-convict overcomes tragedy by designing his own path to success within a society that failed him.
A gritty, heartfelt drama about a brother and sister who both start out with the American Dream of running their own business and being successful. Teresa goes about this dream in a good way, meaning she works hard and treats people right. Her brother, Solomon, is a hustler who borrows money from loan sharks to open a music store. When he doesnt pay, the sharks come after him, but it's his sister who ends up in a wheelchair. She doesn't know it was her brother's fault. The film follows how Solomon descends on a downward spiral while losing faith in everything, while Teresa becomes a stronger person as her faith increases. She eventually learns it was his fault, and they must come to terms and make amends.
