Directed by Jarrod Cann & Erick Stoll • Documentary • 2016 • 16 minutes

In the Spring of 2001, the African-American community of Over-the-Rhine in downtown Cincinnati arose in protest after unarmed 19-year-old, Timothy Thomas, was killed by a white officer named Steven Roach. In the years follow...

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 Horace B. Jenkins • Drama • With Tommye Myrick, Richard Romain, Carol Sutton • 1982 • 104 minutes

Written, produced, and directed by Emmy Award-winning documentarian, Horace B. Jenkins, and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, CANE RIVER is a racially-charged love s...

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...

Directed by Victoria Mills • Documentary • 2020 • 89 minutes

Something incredible is happening behind the locked doors of the James Ranch in Morgan Hill, California, the Bridge City Center for Youth in Bridge City, Louisiana, and 162nd St. Sheltering Arms, in the Bronx, New York. Caring and comm...

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 Mosco Boucault • Documentary • 1998 • 90 minutes

On March 1, 1996, 15-year-old Shafeeq Murrel was killed on the street in South Philadelphia — innocently caught in the crossfire between rival pairs of crack dealers out for revenge. Shafeeq’s murder was one of 435 in Philadelphia that...

Directed by Linda Goldstein Knowlton • Documentary • 2018 • 86 minutes

Set in Oakland, a city with a deep history of social justice movements, WE ARE THE RADICAL MONARCHS documents the Radical Monarchs - an alternative to the Scout movement for girls of color, aged 8-13. Its members earn badges ...

Directed by Steven Fischler, Joel Sucher and Howard Blatt • Documentary • 1974 • 30 minutes

Examining the case of Martin Sostre, a black Puerto Rican bookstore owner in Buffalo, New York who was framed on drug possession charges in 1967 and sentenced to prison, this film shows how the American j...

Directed by Franco Rosso • Documentary • 1985 • 92 minutes

In this compelling and thought-provoking documentary, sports writer and novelist Gordon Williams uses archive footage, as well as interviews with family members and friends, to investigate the troubled life of the mixed-race British boxi...

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 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 Ben Crosbie and Tessa Moran • Documentary • 2013 • 27 minutes

Fate of a Salesman is an intimate portrait of a way of life on the verge of disappearing. In its 60th year of business, Men's Fashion Center in Washington, DC has come to represent identity, legacy and redemption for sales...

Directed by Leah Mahan • Documentary • 2014 • 56 minutes

COME HELL OR HIGH WATER follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who returns to his native coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfpor...

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 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 • 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 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 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 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 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 ...

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 Andrew James • Documentary • With James "Jack Rabbit" Jackson, Deris Solomon, Minister Malik Shabazz, Derionna Watkins, Lorraine Ray • 2020 • 101 minutes

In a rapidly changing America where mass inequality and dwindling opportunity have devastated the black working class, three men f...

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...