Directed by Joseph Strick • 1963 • United States
Starring Shelley Winters, Peter Falk, Lee Grant
A powerhouse cast brings Jean Genet’s incendiary political stage play to the screen. In an unnamed city, Madame Irma (Shelley Winters) runs a brothel where customers explore their sexual fantasies through role-playing. When her police-chief lover (Peter Falk) arrives, she learns that a violent revolution is brewing outside and many of the country’s leaders have been killed in the uprising. Soon, the brothel’s customers and employees are forced to take to the city streets in costume and impersonate the slain leaders in order to help restore sanity.
Directed by Jules Dassin • 1968 • United States
Starring Julian Mayfield, Ruby Dee
In the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, a band of black activists in Cleveland begin arming themselves for revolution. But when the unstable Tank (Julian Mayfield), increasingly uncomfortable wit...
Directed by Sidney Poitier • 1972 • United States
Starring Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee
Civil War veteran Buck (Sidney Poitier) has signed on to guide a wagon train of newly freed slaves moving to claim homesteads in the west. Along with Buck’s wife, Ruth (Ruby Dee), who works tirel...
