African-American Docs

African-American Docs

This is a focused collection of docs about the Black experience in North America, featuring stars of the arts (Kehinde Wiley, Peter Bradley, pictured), iconic writers (James Baldwin) and musicians (Roberta Flack, Gil Scott-Heron, Apollo Theater performers), and politics (Shirley Chisholm), and historic moments of student uprise (The Five Demands). We also recommend checking out our Black Lives collection, which includes films across genres from around the world.

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African-American Docs
  • Marlon Riggs

    7 items

    “If you’ve never heard of Marlon Riggs, you’ll wonder why the hell not. How could an artist this smart, this prescient, this frank, transparent, curious, ruminative and courageous — this funny — escape your notice? Why haven’t these trenchant, masterful video essays, with insinuatingly tangy name...

  • The Intolerable Burden

    Directed by Chea Prince • Documentary • 2003 • 56 minutes

    In the autumn of 1965, sharecroppers Mae Bertha and Matthew Carter enrolled the youngest eight of their thirteen children in the public schools of Drew, Mississippi. Their decision to send the children to the formerly all white schools wa...

  • James Baldwin: From Another Place

    Directed by Sedat Pakay • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1973 • 12 minutes

    Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits o...

  • Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris

    Directed by Terence Dixon • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1970 • 27 minutes

    Shot in Paris, a city in which Baldwin lived for nine years after leaving New York — a decision he has described “as a matter of life and death.” The early sequences find Baldwin uncooperative, even hostile to the B...

  • Edith+Eddie

    Directed by Laura Checkoway • Documentary • 2017 • 29 minutes

    Edith Hill and Eddie Harrison got married in Virginia at ages 96 and 95. Dancing at the honky-tonk and going to church, their newlywed life is filled with affection, prayer and faith. Since tying the knot, both Edith and Eddie have ex...

  • Myth of a Colorblind France

    Directed by Alan Govenar • Documentary • With Tyler Stovall, Monique Y. Wells, Thomas Allen Harris, Karim Toure, Akin Babatunde • 2020 • 86 minutes

    For more than a century, African American artists, authors, musicians and others have traveled to Paris to liberate themselves from the racism of th...

  • Quiet Voices in a Noisy World: The Struggle for Change in Jasper, Texas

    Directed by Alan Govenar • Documentary • 2025 • 73 minutes

    Perhaps no town has experienced the racial divide in America as much as Jasper, Texas. The lynching of James Byrd Jr. in 1998 revealed the deep division between the Black community and their white counterparts. The legacy of slavery runs...

  • South

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 1999 • 70 minutes

    Inspired by her love of William Faulkner and James Baldwin, renowned director Chantal Akerman had planned to produce a meditation on the American South. However, just days before she was to begin filming, James Byrd, Jr. was murdered ...

  • Ghosts of Attica

    Directed by Brad Lichtenstein • Documentary • With Susan Sarandon • 2001 • 90 minutes

    Attica. Like Watergate and Vietnam, it is an icon of recent history. Gov. Rockefeller's brutal re-taking of the prison - a nine-minute, 1600-bullet assault that took the lives of 29 inmates and 10 guards - put ...

  • A Reckoning in Boston

    Directed by James Rutenbeck • Documentary • 2022 • 84 minutes

    Kafi Dixon and Carl Chandler enrolled in a rigorous night course in the humanities at a community center in their Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.

    Kafi, 44, sharp, witty and restless, dropped out of school at 15. She had her first ...

  • Let the Fire Burn

    Directed by Jason Osder • Documentary • 2013 • 95 minutes

    In the astonishingly gripping Let the Fire Burn, director Jason Osder has crafted that rarest of cinematic objects: a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a great thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city ...

  • The Last Angel of History

    Directed by John Akomfrah • Documentary • 1996 • 45 minutes

    John Akomfrah, director of Seven Songs of Malcolm X, returns with an engaging and searing examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing c...

  • 12 O'Clock Boys

    Directed by Lofty Nathan • Documentary • 2013 • 76 minutes

    The 12 O'CLOCK BOYS are a notorious urban dirt bike pack in Baltimore -- popping wheelies and weaving at excessive speeds through traffic, the group impressively evades the hamstrung police. In Lotfy Nathan's wild, dynamic documentary (t...

  • Love and Solidarity

    Directed by Michael Honey • Documentary • 2016 • 38 minutes

    LOVE & SOLIDARITY is an exploration of nonviolence and organizing through the life and teachings of Rev. James Lawson. Lawson provided crucial strategic guidance while working with Martin Luther King, Jr., in southern freedom struggles ...

  • Roberta

    Directed by Antonino D'Ambrosio • Documentary • 2022 • 87 minutes

    Directed by award-winning filmmaker Antonino D'Ambrosio, this is the long overdue documentary about the legendary Roberta Flack. Of course she is well known the world over for “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and "Killing Me Soft...

  • The Rink

    Directed by Sarah Ema Friedland • Documentary • With Gralen Stephon Vereen, Mickey "Bonesaw" Taylor,the Garden State Roller Derby Girls • 2014 • 53 minutes

    Branch Brook Park Roller Rink in Newark, New Jersey is one of the few remaining urban rinks of its kind. This concrete structure is nestled ...

  • Killing Time

    Directed by Fronza Woods • Drama • 1979 • 9 minutes

    KILLING TIME, an offbeat, wryly humorous look at the dilemma of a would-be suicide unable to find the right outfit to die in, examines the personal habits, socialization, and complexities of life that keep us going. Part of the mediamaking move...

  • Fannie's Film

    Directed by Fronza Woods • Documentary • 1981 • 15 minutes

    In FANNIE'S FILM, a 65-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers' exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voiceover about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media's ongoing stereotypes o...

  • Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route

    Directed by Pam Sporn • Documentary • 2018 • 82 minutes

    In Detroit 48202 we take a journey with Wendell along his route, which winds through the center of what was, once upon a time, a vital and thriving city. We listen in on his conversations with his customers – the resilient Detroiters who sh...

  • American Santa

    Directed by Avi Zev Weider • Documentary • 2023 • 24 minutes

    Black Santas are local heroes, spreading joy and love to children and families at a bustling mall during the Christmas season. But even during this special time, the ugly shadow of bigotry falls on the season’s true spirit.

  • No Time To Waste

    Directed by Carl Bidleman • Documentary • 2020 • 52 minutes

    NO TIME TO WASTE celebrates legendary 98-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin's inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America's story. The film follows her journey as an African American woman...

  • Capturing the Flag

    Directed by Anne de Mare • Documentary • 2018 • 76 minutes

    A tight-knit group of friends travel to Cumberland County, North Carolina—the 2016 'posterchild' for voter suppression—intent on proving that the big idea of American democracy can be defended by small acts of individual citizens. What t...

  • Black Hair Magic

    Directed by Alaysja Clark • Documentary • 2017 • 7 minutes

    African-American women discuss the struggles and benefits of being a black woman in America through hair.

  • An Apollo Legend

    Directed by Brian Storm • Documentary • 2008 • 18 minutes

    Decades before American Idol and America's Got Talent captured the attention of millons on TV, the world renowned Apollo Theater in Harlem started hosting its popular Amateur Night, which launched the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, James Bro...