A tribute to Pluto, everyone’s favorite planetoid

A witty commentary on our over-reliance on spell check that plays up phonetics with hilarious results.

Raymond Joshua, a young black performance poet, is arrested and imprisoned for a petty marijuana charge in a Washington, D.C. jail. Although the confining prison walls do little to shield him from danger, it is within those walls that Raymond establishes his identity, strength, and voice and meets a prison gang leader and a prison writing teacher, Lauren Bell. Bell inspires Raymond to use the power of creative expression to free himself from the struggles and demise of the Black male as another victim of the judicial system.

Director Paul Devlin's fast-paced documentary follows four bards as they head to the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, OR. The competition begins with the Grand Slam tournament at New York City's Nuyorican Poets Café, and then it's off to the nationals for chaps Saul Williams, Beau Sia, Mums the Schemer and Jessica Care Moore. The quartet vies against 26 other teams from across the country in a dramatic contest awash with tension, enmity and controversy.

Harry Hay was one of the founding fathers of the gay rights movement, and for more than 50 years was synonymous with the term "gay pride." Director Eric Slade's documentary about Hay looks at both his life and the movement he did so much to define. In 1948, Hay founded the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles; the goal of the organization was to establish a "Golden Brotherhood," one that sought to redefine homosexuality as a normal, healthy way of life. The problem, Hay famously maintained, was not homosexuality itself, but the way it was treated by society. Dramatizations, photographs, archival footage, and interviews with original Mattachine Society members are all incorporated to tell Hay's remarkable story, one whose legacy continues to be felt in the treatment of gays and lesbians in culture today.