Based on a true story, The Banker centers on revolutionary businessmen Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie) and Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson), who devise an audacious and risky plan to take on the racist establishment of the 1960s by helping other African Americans pursue the American dream. Along with Garret’s wife Eunice (Nia Long), they train a working-class white man, Matt Steiner (Nicholas Hoult), to pose as the rich and privileged face of their burgeoning real estate and banking empire – while Garrett and Morris pose as a janitor and a chauffeur.

     The opening of Tyler Perry’s film studio in Atlanta over the weekend was a joyous but bittersweet occasion as the filmmaker intended to honor pioneering actress Diahann Carroll before her untimely passing.

     Black artists, filmmakers and films were a key part of the mix. Big budget movies, small indie films, documentaries and shorts filled out the innovative programming. Check out the best of the best and the most noteworthy.

      It’s not very often that by the end of a play, there are empty theatre seats, audience members out of place and no clear curtain call for actors to take their bows. Yet that’s exactly what happened when the house lights came on at Woolly Mammoth’s version of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s 2019 Pulitzer winning play “Fairview.”