STORMY WEATHER (1943) Trailer

This musical celebration of Black performance, starring Lena Horne, traces Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s rise through vaudeville and jazz, with support from an all-Black cast, including legendary Fisk graduate F. E. Miller, reflecting Nashville’s legacy as one of the most important sites of Black intellectual and performance culture in American history. Mon, February 23, 2026 | Seminar at 7:00pm, Film at 8:00pm This screening will be followed by Seminar: Nashville’s Black Cinema Culture: A Hidden History of Film From Music City. Presented by T. Minton, Belcourt’s public historian and archivist. About the Seminar: Nashville’s Black Cinema Culture: A Hidden History of Film From Music City is a one-hour Belcourt 100 seminar uncovering a century of filmmaking by Black Nashvillians whose work has long remained out of view. Placing local cinema culture within the broader social and political history of 20th-century Nashville and the U.S, the seminar examines how African Americans emerged in the moving image during and after Jim Crow segregation. The talk traces the work of Black actors, writers, directors and exhibitors who lived in or passed through Music City, alongside the theaters and cinemas that nurtured their creative lives. These spaces were not only sites of entertainment, but also centers of community, resistance and connection. The seminar shows how Black filmmakers responded to changing cultural conditions while shaping them in return. Together, these stories reveal how Nashville functioned as a surprising nexus of Black entertainment culture and early cinema during the last century — a legacy still reflective today. Often overlooked, the city’s Black film culture played a vital role in transmitting ideas, influencing perceptions, and shaping the evolving identity of both Nashville and American cinema itself.