Mypheduh Films

On a photo shoot in Ghana, an American model slips back in time, becomes enslaved on a plantation and bears witness to the agony of her ancestral past.

Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs in Washington, D.C. and living with his girlfriend and her son. When criticism of his alienated behavior come from her and a father figure too often, he runs to the streets or to his grandmother's rural house in Virginia. Her criticism and his memories of the past both send him fleeing again to Los Angeles, where he is surrounded by superficial people who have forgotten how to be compassionate human beings. It is here that the advice of his friends and grandmother combine to transform him from an embittered ex-soldier to a strong and confident man.

In a personal quest, filmmaker Shirikiana Aina made this documentary capturing her efforts to learn more about her father, who died when she was a child. A Michigan man descended from slaves, he was labeled a radical by the FBI. Aina traveled to Ghana, documenting an oral history of slavery in Elmina, a port where Africans were warehoused before shipping to the New World. She also filmed African-Americans who have established a colony in Ghana, choosing to raise their families there.

In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization.