Bobby Rush

The story of James Cotton, harmonica powerhouse, whose music shaped blues and rock. Orphaned at 9, Cotton’s life tracks America’s history—from the post-depression cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta to being mentored by the original Delta bluesmen, to Chicagoland’s artistic reinvention to the live music scene in Austin, Texas.

Automatic Everything

Chicago 1969: Activists from the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and Young Patriots united African Americans, Latinos, and poor whites to confront police brutality and unfair housing practices in one of America’s most segregated cities. A timely story of collective action, The First Rainbow Coalition tells this little-known chronicle of political struggle with insight and urgency using archival footage and interviews with those who lived it.

The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.

A musical journey through the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou, the juke joints of the Mississippi Delta and Moonshine soaked BBQs in the North Mississippi Hill Country. Visiting the last original blues devils, many in their 80's, still living in the deep south, working without management and touring the Chitlin' Circuit. Let Bobby Rush, Barbara Lynn, Henry Gray, Carol Fran, Lazy Lester, Bilbo Walker, RL Boyce, Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes, Lil Buck Sinegal, LC Ulmer and their friends awaken the blues in all of us.

This film traces the road of the Blues and takes us on a journey to mythical places: From the banks of the Niger to New Orleans, going up the Mississippi through Memphis to the skyscrapers of Chicago. It tells the story of this culture which faced the worst barriers and shows that Humanity can overcome barbarity.

American Revolution 2 begins with footage of the political demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention and the forceful reaction of the Chicago Police Department and the National Guard. Investigating the lack of an African American presence at the protests, the filmmakers follow members of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party as they search for common ground with a variety of white activist groups. In one scene, Panther Bobby Lee and members of the Young Patriots, a community of white Appalachian activists living in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, organize to protest police brutality. The seemingly disparate groups find shared social and political objectives that overcome racial differences – police violence, poverty, lack of employment, and poor living conditions. This potential for a cross-racial and interethnic political movement is the movie’s beautiful but unrealized dream.