A widow tries to influence the local mayoral election in Baltimore, Maryland, after she discovers that a black candidate is being used by the incumbent mayor to further his own reelection efforts.

Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.

HARLEM, USA: in the aftermath of Martin Luther King’s murder, German filmmaker Klaus Wildenhahn turned his 16mm camera on the New Lafayette Theatre as its players rehearsed scenes, ran public workshops and conducted exercises in uptown Manhattan. New Lafayette (or NLT) had been founded by actor-director Robert Macbeth the previous year, with the aim of producing theater for black people, by black people, to reflect the experiences and vernacular of the Harlem community. Within the Black Arts Movement, NLT would become a significant institution: it published the journal Black Theatre, and employed a host of talents – including the Black Panthers’ Minister of Culture, Ed Bullins, and the great pianist Junior Mance, both of whom appear in Wildenhahn’s film as resident collaborators.

A fifteen-year-old boy wants to buy a gun from an adult racketeer named Priest, in order to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem.

In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers while the authorities question about the method of their escape.