Directed by Alex Rappoport • Documentary • With Peter Bradley • 2024 • 86 minutes

When filmmaker Alex Rappoport met then-79-year-old abstract artist Peter Bradley in early 2020, Bradley hadn't sold many paintings or had a major show in over four decades - yet he still painted every day in a ship...

Directed by Robert Mugge • Documentary • With Gil Scott-Heron • 1983 • 79 minutes

BLACK WAX is a musical-political entertainment film produced and directed by Robert Mugge. It centers on the late African American poet-singer-songwriter Gil Scott-Heron - the man Melody Maker called "the most dang...

Directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss • Documentary • 2023 • 74 minutes

THE FIVE DEMANDS is a riveting story about the student strike that changed the face of higher education forever. In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, a...

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...

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...

Directed by Andrew Garrison, Nancy Bless and Noland Walker • Documentary • 2007 • 55 minutes

THIRD WARD TX is the story of how Project Row Houses uses the tools of design, art and architecture to transform two blocks of “shotgun” houses familiar across the South into exhibition space, classrooms...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1995 • 87 minutes

Having grappled with the stereotypes imposed upon black people by white America, Riggs turned his attention to another fraught issue: the definitions of “blackness” that African-Americans impose on each other. Weaving together poetry, co...

Directed by Theo Rigby • Documentary • 2014 • 7 minutes

The Caretaker is a short film about the relationship between an immigrant caretaker and an elderly woman in the last months of her life. Joesy, a Fijian immigrant, works long hours providing live-in care for 95-year-old Haru Tsurumoto. Thro...

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.

Directed by Cheryl Fabio • Documentary • 2023 • 93 minutes

Seen primarily through the eyes of women and children of color living through housing insecurity in California's Alameda County, A Rising Tide aims to identify how and why homelessness occurs.

The film juxtaposes the perspectives of var...

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...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1991 • 8 minutes

Marlon Riggs' experimental music video politicizes the homoeroticism of African-American men. With images—sensual, sexual, and defiant—and words intended to provoke, Anthem reasserts the self-evident right to life and liberty in an era of...

Directed by Mike Mascoll • Documentary • 2020 • 54 minutes

An educated citizenry is said to be the backbone of democracy and a crucial bulwark in an increasingly interconnected and hyper-competitive world. Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act helped weave equal education for all ...

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...

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...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1992 • 38 minutes

Through music, poetry and quiet, at times, chilling self-disclosure, five positive black gay men speak of their individual confrontation with AIDS, illuminating the difficult journey black men throughout America have made in coping with ...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1986 • 58 minutes

Unflinching, unsettling, and essential, this Emmy-winning documentary examines the devastating legacy of black stereotypes throughout American history, from the slavery era to the present. Drawing on a wide variety of media—from minstrel...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1991 • 88 minutes

An essential companion to Ethnic Notions, Color Adjustment explores black representation in the age of primetime television. Deconstructing cultural touchstones from Amos ’n’ Andy to The Jeffersons to The Cosby Show, this cogent and prov...

Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1990 • 10 minutes

An exploration of Black gay male desires and dreams. Affirmations starts with an affectionate, humorous confessional and moves on to a wish for empowerment and incorporation.

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.

Directed by Gretchen Hildebran, Vivian Vazquez • Documentary • With Carmen Rosado, Hetty Fox, Robert Foster • 2020 • 76 minutes

Decade of Fire covers a shocking but untold piece of American urban history, when the South Bronx was on fire in the 1970s. 

Left unprotected by the city government, ...

Directed by Joe Angio • Documentary • With Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles, St. Clair Bourne, Gil Scott-Heron • 2005 • 85 minutes

Melvin van Peebles’ remarkable life story reveals an artist and a man whose groundbreaking impact on film, politics and pop culture remains, forty-five years after the r...

Directed by Jeff Dupre • Documentary • With Kehinde Wiley • 2014 • 40 minutes

The artist behind Barack Obama’s presidential portrait, Kehinde Wiley is known for his vibrant, larger-than-life reinterpretations of classical portraits featuring young Black men. “Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace” ...

Directed by Bob Hercules,Gordon Quinn • Documentary • With Nana Amoah,
Bill T. Jones,
Lindsay Jones • 2011 • 86 minutes

A Good Man follows acclaimed director/choreographer Bill T. Jones (Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Still/Here, FELA!) as he and his company create their most ambitious work, ...