In the nineteen-seventies, U.C.L.A.’s Ethno-Communications program, founded to increase minority enrollment, attracted a critical mass of young Black filmmakers. They quickly began to make a widely varied range of independent films that were unified by their bold and intimate attention to Black lives and history, and by distinctive cinematic forms to match; the group eventually gained the nickname the L.A. Rebellion. Though few of its members have had careers commensurate to their great early achievements, the movement has had a delayed but powerful impact on later generations of filmmakers, as seen in the series “L.A. Rebellion: Then and Now” (at Film at Lincoln Center, April 25-May 4), which presents some of the movement’s major works along with notable recent successors.

“Bush Mama,” the thesis film that Haile Gerima (who entered U.C.L.A. in 1970) completed in 1975, is set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles and stars Barbara O. Jones as Dorothy, who struggles to raise her young daughter (Susan Williams) when her partner, T.C. (Johnny Weathers), is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit. (It screens April 25 and April 28.) Gerima’s unflinching yet sometimes heartily humorous view of Dorothy’s world ranges from documentary shots of street life and politically charged interactions with bureaucrats to confessional conversations with a neighbor (Cora Lee Day) and voice-overs evoking Dorothy’s inner life.

Julie Dash entered U.C.L.A. in 1976 but didn’t make her first feature, “Daughters of the Dust” (May 2 and May 4), until 1991; though it’s her only feature to date, it marked the history of cinema by way of its approach to history. It’s set in 1902, in a Gullah community on an island off the coast of Georgia, where a large extended family is preparing to move to the North. The intricate tensions of their relationships are deepened by evocations of the past—including their forebears’ tragic resistance to enslavement—and of enduring African traditions. Dash (whose cast also includes Jones and Day) brings the region’s culture to life by way of a resplendent, spiritually exalted style that’s among the modern cinema’s most distinctive visions.

One of the most acclaimed L.A. Rebellion movies, “Killer of Sheep,” by Charles Burnett—the first of the group to enter U.C.L.A., in 1967 (and a cinematographer on “Bush Mama”)—is screening April 18-24 at Film Forum, in a new restoration. This, too, was a thesis film, completed in 1977, but its release was long delayed because of music rights. It’s a sharply observed, lyrically romantic drama of a young paterfamilias in Watts named Stan (Henry G. Sanders), whose harsh job in a slaughterhouse leaves him embittered and depressed. Burnett tenderly sketches the resulting stresses in Stan’s marriage—a living-room dance scene with his wife (Kaycee Moore), set to Dinah Washington’s record of “This Bitter Earth,” is a classic in itself—and evokes the family’s life in generous detail, with special attention to the couple’s children.—Richard Brody

About Town

Broadway

In his historic career, Stephen Sondheim stripped the American musical of its schmaltz, tapping into the curdled emotions underneath. In “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” a posthumous revue imported from the West End, the producer Cameron Mackintosh and the director Matthew Bourne smear it back on, giving Sondheim’s complicated œuvre the sheen of supper-club entertainment. Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga lead the cast, decked out in spangles and tuxes, as they cycle through the hits—“Send in the Clowns,” “Broadway Baby,” “The Ladies Who Lunch”—and deploy the occasional kickline. The evening lacks Sondheim’s ironic bite, but, if you love his musicals, you could do worse than hearing Peters, his preëminent muse, sing “Losing My Mind.” Featuring Beth Leavel, for shameless scene-stealing.—Michael Schulman (Samuel J. Friedman; through June 15.)

For more: read Sondheim’s conversation with D. T. Max, from 2022, about the ideas he’d abandoned, the minutiae of his technique, and the lesson that any artist must learn.

Soul

For more than a decade the D.C.-born musician Nick Hakim has been wading deeper and deeper into a mind-bending sonic vortex. While studying at Berklee College of Music, the singer and multi-instrumentalist débuted fully formed, in 2014, on “Where Will We Go,” a two-part EP that outlined a rich neo-soul sound, robust yet seemingly out of focus. Hakim then released his opus “Green Twins,” in 2017, establishing himself as a purveyor of foggy psychedelic music. The albums that followed, including one with the jazz saxophonist Roy Nathanson, only furthered a hallucinatory appeal; the most recent, “Cometa” (2022), is sublime in its subtlety. Alongside special guests, Hakim celebrates the tenth anniversary of “Where Will We Go,” returning to the fount of a bewitching constellation.—Sheldon Pearce (First Unitarian Congregational Society; April 25.)

Off Broadway

Benedict Andrews’s gorgeously performed modernization of Chekhov’s losing-the-estate drama “The Cherry Orchard” is a tale told in textures: soft kilim carpets define the playing space; the capitalist Lopakhin (Adeel Akhtar) flashes his gold watch, counting the minutes till the ruination of the aristocrat Ranevskaya (a stunning Nina Hoss), a woman as richly delicate as her own silk blouse. Andrews adds musical interludes, which don’t always work, and brutal jokes, which do. Here the estate’s weirdo, Epikhodov (Éanna Hardwicke), is an incel in a Virginia Tech windbreaker—“Have you read Žižek?,” he asks a woman who rebuffs him—and goofball Simeonov-Pishchik (David Ganly) bounds irrepressibly offstage, already several symptoms into a heart attack.—Helen Shaw (St. Ann’s Warehouse; through April 27.)

For more: read Hilton Als’s review of a 2016 mounting, and the story of how the late actress Kim Stanley introduced him to Chekhov’s greatness.

Dance Theatre