American Playhouse

In this Shakespearean farce, Hero and her groom-to-be, Claudio, team up with Claudio's commanding officer, Don Pedro, the week before their wedding to hatch a matchmaking scheme. Their targets are sharp-witted duo Benedick and Beatrice -- a tough task indeed, considering their corresponding distaste for love and each other. Meanwhile, meddling Don John plots to ruin the wedding.

In 1940s Chicago, a young black man takes a job as a chauffeur to a white family, which takes a turn for the worse when he accidentally kills the teenage daughter of the couple and then tries to cover it up.

Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.

A brash 22-year-old FBI agent trumps up charges of Communist-spying against a Chinese laundryman. 10 years later, he wants to make amends to the man and his teenage daughter.

Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis.

An American-Chinese man brings over his wife from China to America, but the challenges of making a living and adjusting to a new life, plus the attentions of a gambler threaten their marriage.

All Dolph Beeler wanted was a can of paint remover when he went to Bud Bullard's hardware store in Millville. But a simple misunderstandling between two men has turned into an outright war between two towns in this outrageous comedy of errors.--Summary from container. -- WorldCat

Young man, who can't get along with the rest of the world, especially his mother, decides to try to take his life in his own hands. A TV movie directed by Jay Holman.

A substantial insurance payment could mean either financial salvation or personal ruin for a poor black family.

During the summer of 1981, a group of friends in New York are completely unprepared for the onslaught of AIDS. What starts as a rumor about a mysterious "gay cancer" soon turns into a major crisis as, one by one, some of the friends begin to fall ill, leaving the others to panic about who will be next. As death takes its toll, the lives of these friends are forever redefined by an unconditional display of love, hope and courage.

Nineteen people were hanged and one man pressed to death, while hundreds went to jail during the "witch hysteria" of 1692. THREE SOVEREIGNS FOR SARAH offers an accurate portrayal of the Salem witch trials, with real characters and original transcripts woven into the dialogue. The film is a powerful, moving story about three loving sisters accused of witchcraft.

A slightly ironical description of the colony of German artists in Los Angeles, who had to leave their country during the Nazi-regime. A young playwriter (von Horvath) joins them and finds out, that there are gaps between the artistical attitudes and the real live behavior of authors like Thomas or Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger or Bertold Brecht.

On Christmas Eve, a relentlessly cheerful woman escapes from the killers hired by her husband, and embarks on a series of strange encounters.

In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.

Fictionalized portrait of one of history's great literary couples: Stein & Toklas. Summer 1930s France, Alice tends to ailing Gertrude; they visit Fernande Olivier, Guillaume Apollinaire, others; and Hemingway pops in.

A crippled dwarf is forced to become jester to a tyrannical king, but when the king abuses a beautiful dwarf with whom the jester is in love the jester plots a terrible revenge.

After his mother dies and father goes to fight in World War II, a young boy moves in with his aunt and uncle who live in the countryside. Lonely and unhappy, he starts believing he has super powers. Then a "dead" man shows up.

A man who wants to move on with his life by moving to California and marry his girlfriend, finds it difficult as he still lives in the towering shadow of his aging father.

In a woods filled with magic and fairy tale characters, a baker and his wife set out to end the curse put on them by their neighbor, a spiteful witch.

It is just another day in the small town of Hamlin until something disastrous happens. Suddenly, news breaks that a series of nuclear warheads has been dropped along the Eastern Seaboard and, more locally, in California. As people begin coping with the devastating aftermath of the attacks — many suffer radiation poisoning — the Wetherly family tries to survive.