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 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 • 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 William Canning, Donald Brittain • Documentary • 1974 • 56 minutes

Spring 1972. The Chicago Cubs are poised to win the National League's Pennant race, lead by their star pitcher, a Black Canadian named Ferguson Jenkins, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991. Out of ...

Directed by Rex Miller • Documentary • 2014 • 83 minutes

Althea Gibson broke records on and off the tennis court. A truant from the rough streets of Harlem, Gibson emerged as a most unlikely queen of the highly segregated tennis world in the 1950s. A sharecropper's daughter, Gibson's family migr...

Directed by Jennifer Dworkin • Documentary • 2003 • 155 minutes

Jennifer Dworkin’s groundbreaking documentary LOVE & DIANE presents a searingly honest and moving examination of poverty, welfare and drug rehabilitation in the United States today. Filmed in New York City over a five-year period, D...

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 ...

Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1970 • 30 minutes

In 1969, black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. Featuring An...

Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1960 • 20 minutes

INTEGRATION REPORT 1 examines the struggle for black equality in Alabama, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C., incorporating footage by documentary legends Albert Maysles and Ricky Leacock, protest songs by Maya Angelou, and a speech by M...

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...

Directed by John Akomfrah • Documentary • 2010 • 94 minutes

Structured as an allegorical fable set between 1949 and 1970, THE NINE MUSES is comprised of nine overlapping musical chapters that mix archival material with original scenes. Together, they form a stylized, idiosyncratic retelling of t...

Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2004 • 29 minutes

In association with the Center for Southern Folklore, SERMONS AND SACRED PICTURES profiles Reverend L.O. Taylor, a Memphis-based Baptist minister who in the 1930s and 40s built a fiery reputation by lacing his sermons with parables, fable...

Directed by Brian Chinhema • Documentary • 2011 • 77 minutes

Multiracial people are the fastest growing demographic in America, yet there is no official political recognition for mixed-race people. MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY explores the social, political, and religious impact of the multiracial movem...

Directed by Charles Burnett and Daniel Loewenthal • Documentary • 2018 • 56 minutes

POWER TO HEAL tells a poignant chapter in the historic struggle to secure equal and adequate access to healthcare for all Americans. Central to the story is the tale of how a new national program, Medicare, was u...

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 ...

Directed by Thom Powers • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes

Two advocacy groups, The Million Moms and the Second Amendment Sisters, are diametrically opposed on gun control, but they agree on one point: mothers will and should have a voice in determining gun control policy in America. GUNS and MOT...

Directed by Chivas DeVinck • Documentary • 2018 • 99 minutes

Syl Cheney-Coker (author of The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) and Niyi Osundare (recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award, Nigeria’s highest recognition for distinguished academic an...

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, ...

Directed by Jonathan Olshefski • Documentary • 2017 • 105 minutes

​Filmed with vérité intimacy for nearly a decade, Quest is the moving portrait of the Rainey family living in North Philadelphia.

Beginning at the dawn of the Obama presidency, Christopher “Quest” Rainey and his wife Christine’a ...

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...

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 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 ...

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 St. Clair Bourne • Documentary • 1983 • 60 minutes

IN MOTION: AMIRI BARAKA profiles the outspoken representative - formerly LeRoi Jones - of the Black consciousness movement who has been a major figure on the American literary and political landscape for three decades. Set in Newark,...