Movies by Ossie Davis
Dinosaur
An orphaned dinosaur raised by lemurs joins an arduous trek to a sancturary after a meteorite shower destroys his family home.
Gladiator
Tommy Riley has moved with his dad to Chicago from a 'nice place'. He keeps to himself, goes to school. However, after a street fight he is noticed and quickly falls into the world of illegal underground boxing - where punches can kill.
12 Angry Men
During the trial of a man accused of his father's murder, a lone juror takes a stand against the guilty verdict handed down by the others as a result of their preconceptions and prejudices.
Doctor Dolittle
A successful physician and devoted family man, John Dolittle seems to have the world by the tail, until a long suppressed talent he possessed as a child, the ability to communicate with animals is suddenly reawakened with a vengeance! Now every creature within squawking distance wants the good doctor's advice, unleashing an outrageous chain of events that turns his world upside down!
Grumpy Old Men
For decades, next-door neighbors and former friends John and Max have feuded, trading insults and wicked pranks. When an attractive widow moves in nearby, their bad blood erupts into a high-stakes rivalry full of naughty jokes and adolescent hijinks.
Do the Right Thing
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.
The Secret Path
14-year-old Jo Ann Foley lives in squalor in a rural Southern community during World War II. Abused by her bootlegging grandfather Hank, Jo Ann has, like her mother Marie, been forced into a life of prostitution. Periodically escaping her miserable existence, Jo Ann finds comfort, security, and genuine love with a poor but proud African American couple: Honey and Too Tall.
Jungle Fever
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives
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.
Marcus Garvey: Toward Black Nationhood
A documentary, combining archival material and live interviews with Marcus Garvey, Jr., and others, which introduces the life and work of the pioneer Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.
The Outsider
Darren McGavin is David Ross, a private investigator playing a game of follow the money. A simple case of embezzling turns bad quickly when bodies start dropping and the savvy P.I. is the primary suspect in an attractive woman's death. This NBC TV movie served as a pilot for the later series.
The Sheriff
A rape case opens racial divisions in a small town. A black sheriff and his white deputy investigate allegations that a wealthy white businessman raped a black college student.
The Tenth Level
Inspired by the Stanley Milgram obedience research, this TV movie chronicles a psychology professor's study to determine why people, such as the Nazis, were willing to "just follow orders" and do horrible things to others. Professor Stephen Turner leads students to believe that they are applying increasingly painful electric shocks to other subjects when they fail to perform a task correctly, and is alarmed to see how much pain the students can be convinced to inflict "in the name of science."
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand presents the life and achievements of an extraordinary man. Athlete, singer, and scholar, Robeson was also a charismatic champion of the rights of the poor working man, the disfranchised and people of color. He led a life in the vanguard of many movements, achieved international acclaim for his music and suffered tremendous personal sacrifice. His story is one of the great dramas of the 20th century, spanning an international canvas of social upheaval and ideological controversy.
Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class
The Black middle class, torn between white goals and Black needs, are examined by producers William Greaves and William Branch in a 90-minute NET Journal documentary.
Miss Evers' Boys
The true story of the US Government's 1932 Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments, in which a group of black test subjects were allowed to die, despite a cure having been developed.
Freedom Man
The story of Benjamin Banneker, the early American patriot whose achievements rival those of Benjamin Franklin!! Risking his life, working with the Underground Railroad to elude vicious slave catchers!
Malcolm X: Make It Plain
Narrated by actress Alfre Woodard, this trenchant, eye-opening doc traces the radical civil rights leader’s life from his tumultuous childhood, through his rise in the ranks of the Nation of Islam, to his 1965 assassination.
Gone Are the Days!
A young, idealistic man returns home to the plantation where he grew up in servitude. With him, he brings his fiance, Lutiebelle, in hopes of convincing the plantation owner that she is really his cousin in order to secure the family inheritance. To aid in the comic complications that follow are his family members Missy and Gitlow, and the plantation owners endearing (but ineffectual) son Charlie.
Joe Versus the Volcano
Hypochondriac Joe Banks finds out he has six months to live, quits his dead end job, musters the courage to ask his co-worker out on a date, and is then hired to jump into a volcano by a mysterious visitor.