Harry Edwards

Follows the life and career of Arthur Ashe.

It is one of the most iconic images of our time: two African-American medal winners at the 1968 Olympics standing in silent protest with heads bowed and fists raised as “The Star Spangled Banner” is played. This documentary film is a revealing exploration into the circumstances that led runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos to that historic moment at the Mexico City Games, mining the great personal risks they took and the subsequent fallout they endured.

During an NBA lockout, a sports agent, Ray Burke, presents his rookie client, Erick Scott, with an intriguing and controversial business opportunity.

Whenever the phrase "breaking the color line" is used, there's a temptation to invoke Jackie Robinson's story. However, Perry Wallace, the first black college athlete in the Southeast Conference, was a mere teenager who stood all alone at center court in such hotbeds of rabid racism as Starkville, Mississippi and Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the silent protest of Tommie Smith and John Carlos changed The Games forever, becoming one of the defining images of the 20th century.

From the well-publicized events at San Francisco State in 1968 to the image of black students with guns emerging from the takeover of the student union at Cornell University in April, 1969, the struggle for a more relevant and meaningful education, including demands for black and ethnic studies programs, became a clarion call across the country in the late 1960's. Through the stories of these young men and women who were at the forefront of these efforts, Agents of Change examines the untold story of the racial conditions on college campuses and in the country that led to these protests. Agents of Change links the past to the present and the present to the past--making it not just a movie but a movement.

Organist Korla Pandit was an alluring enigma, a television pioneer and the godfather of exotica music. He never spoke a word on 900 episodes of his groundbreaking 1950s TV program but captured the hearts of countless Los Angeles housewives with his soulful, hypnotic gaze and theatrical performance of popular tunes and East Indian compositions on the newly developed Hammond B3 organ. In the ’90s he resurfaced as a cult figure with the tiki/lounge music aficionados and ended up immortalized in the film Ed Wood. Often pegged as a “man of mystery,” Korla lived up to that billing when he took an amazing secret with him to his grave in 1998—one that is finally revealed in KORLA.

The black power salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympics was an iconic moment in the US civil rights struggle. Far less known is the part in that episode in history played by Peter Norman, the white Australian on the podium who had run second — and the price paid afterward by all three athletes.

Fists of Freedom examines one of the 20th century’s most memorable moments — the dramatic “Black Power” demonstration of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos on the victory stand at the 1968 Summer games in Mexico City. Using rare footage, archival photos and interviews with key figures from the era, revisit a pivotal event in American history.