Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver • Documentary • With Myles Horton, May Justice, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Bernice Robinson • 1985 • 85 minutes

Lucy Massie Phenix's You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the South is about individuals who have dared to change the world for the be...

Directed by Shola Lynch • Documentary • With Shirley Chisholm, Amiri Baraka, Octavia Butler, Bobby Seale • 2004 • 77 minutes

Recalling a watershed event in US politics, this compelling documentary takes an in-depth look at the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman...

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...

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 George Nierenberg • Documentary • With Thomas A. Dorsey, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Delois Barrett Campbell, Billie Barrett GreenBey, Rodessa Barrett Porter, Edgar O'Neal, Edward O'Neal • 1982 • 100 minutes

One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time, Say Amen, Somebody is ...

Directed by Andrew Rossi • Documentary • With Okwui Okpokwasili • 2017 • 91 minutes

From director Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times, The First Monday in May) comes an electrifying portrait of writer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili and her acclaimed one-woman show, Bronx Gothic. R...

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 Robert Mugge • Documentary • With Sun Ra and his Arkestra • 1980 • 59 minutes

Robert Mugge filmed jazz great Sun Ra on location in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. between 1978 and 1980. The resulting 60-minute film includes multiple public and private performances, poet...

Directed by Robert Mugge • Documentary • With Al Green, Willie Mitchell, Ken Tucker • 1984 • 66 minutes

GOSPEL ACCORDING TO AL GREEN looks at Green's transition from hugely successful soul singer to gospel artist and fundamentalist preacher. Filmed in concert in Washington, D.C., in rehearsal in...

Directed by Joanne Grant • Documentary • 1981 • 63 minutes

FUNDI: THE STORY OF ELLA BAKER reveals the instrumental role that Ella Baker, a friend and advisor to Martin Luther King, played in shaping the American civil rights movement. The dynamic activist was affectionately known as the Fundi, a...

Directed by Fatou Cissé • Documentary • With Souleymane Cissé, Martin Scorsese, Costa-Gavras, Baba Diop • 2022 • 73 minutes

A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé is the story of a filmmaker as told by his daughter. Through interviews with his friends, family, and collaborators, th...

Directed by Robert Clem • Documentary • With J.W. Alexander, Ira Tucker • 2018 • 87 minutes

How They Got Over tells the story of how Black gospel quartet music became a primary source for what we would call rock and roll, and in the process helped to break down racial walls in 1950s America.

Be...

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...

Directed by Celeste Bell, Paul Sng • Documentary • With Ruth Negga, Thurston Moore, Kathleen Hanna • 2021 • 96 minutes

Poly Styrene was the first woman of color in the UK to front a successful rock band. She introduced the world to a new sound of rebellion, using her unconventional voice to sin...

Directed by Alain Kassanda • Documentary • 2023 • 89 minutes

At Ibadan, Nigeria’s oldest university, a student association hosts a documentary screening and discussion group. In a country where dissent is frequently punished, this Thursday Film Series becomes a space for conversation and impassi...

Directed by Rosine Mbakam • Drama • With Pierrette Aboheu Njeuthat • 2023 • 93 minutes

Over the past decade, Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam (Chez Jolie Coiffure, Delphine’s Prayers) has distinguished herself for her quietly observational documentary portraits of African women. With Mambar P...

Directed by Grace Lee, Marjan Safinia • Documentary • With Stacey Abrams, Rashida Tlaib • 2020 • 111 minutes

“Episode One: Building The Movement” opens with the powerful reminder that “women of color have been the backbone of our communities forever.” An energetic montage of modern American civi...

Directed by Marjan Safinia, Grace Lee • Documentary • With Stacey Abrams, Rashida Tlaib • 2020 • 121 minutes

“Episode Two: Claiming Power” takes us to the weeks leading up to election day and focuses on how organizers combat voter suppression in their own communities. At the heart of the episode...

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...

Directed by Adam Bhala Lough, Ethan Higbee • Documentary • With Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Paul McCartney, The Clash, Bunny Wailer, Marcus Garvey, Carl Bradshaw, Eve, Benicio Del Toro • 2008 • 95 minutes

THE UPSETTER tells the wild, weed-fueled story of Lee “Scratch” Perry — a ...

Directed by Lori Cheatle • Documentary • 2000 • 60 minutes

In the 1930s Jewish intellectuals who escaped Nazi Germany and immigrated to the U.S. faced an uncertain future. Confronted with anti-Semitism at American universities and a public distrust of foreigners, many sought refuge in an unlikel...

Directed by Leo Hurwitz • Documentary • With Alfred Drake, Muriel Smith, Gary Merrill • 1948 • 71 minutes

The year was 1945. The free world rejoices over the defeat of fascism. But the peace soon chilled, and in the Cold War that followed the United States entered a period of national paranoia a...

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 Brad Bennett, Chris Haley • Documentary • 2021 • 40 minutes

Throughout the South, vast numbers of African-American gravesites and burial grounds for enslaved persons have been lost or are disappearing through neglect and nature reclaiming the solemn tombstones and markers. Recently, ...