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Black Lives

Black Lives

OVID.tv is proud to present a large selection of films about contemporary Black lives - from documentaries ranging in topics from Harlem's Apollo Theater and performer Okwui Okpokwasili to an allegorical fable by John Akomfrah.

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Black Lives
  • 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 ...

  • My Brother's Wedding

    Directed by Charles Burnett • Drama • With Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett, Ronnie Bell • 1983 • 86 minutes

    In 1983, after many long months of shooting, Charles Burnett sent his rough-cut of My Brother’s Wedding to his producers. Ignoring his request to finish the editing of t...

  • Bless Their Little Hearts

    Directed by Billy Woodberry • Drama • With Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore • 1983 • 80 minutes

    Searching for steady work, Charlie (Nate Hardman) views his chronic unemployment as a kind of spiritual trial. But selling a few catfish can’t sustain a family of five while his wife, Andais (Kaycee Moore)...

  • Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You.

    Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • Documentary • 2021 • 76 minutes

    As we float through the streets of Lesotho, following a cross-bearing woman and an omnipresent figure wearing wings, a tumultuous history of sorrow and suffering between the motherland and its people unravels. The through lin...

  • 64 Day Hero: A Boxer's Tale

    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...

  • Trouble Sleep

    Directed by Alain Kassanda • Documentary • 2020 • 41 minutes

    Kassanda’s freewheeling urban portrait follows two young men, Fred and Akin, as they navigate the crowded roadways of Ibadan, Nigeria’s third largest city. Engineering graduate Fred is beginning a new job as a taxi driver, while Akin p...

  • 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...

  • Unmarked

    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, ...

  • The Poets

    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...

  • The Nine Muses

    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...

  • Quest

    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 ...

  • Jaha's Promise

    Directed by Patrick Farrelly, Kate O’Callaghan • Documentary • With Jaha Dukureh • 2017 • 80 minutes

    Jaha’s Promise tells the story of a young woman who returns home to campaign against the brutal practices that almost destroyed her life. Jaha Dukureh was subject to female genital mutilation as ...

  • Street Fighting Men

    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...

  • Fate of a Salesman

    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...

  • Bronx Gothic (Okwui Okpokwasili)

    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...

  • Multiracial Identity

    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...

  • A Good Man (Bill T. Jones)

    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, ...

  • If This Ain't Heaven

    Directed by Roberta Cantow • Documentary • With Jacob Gaymon and Africa, his cat. • 1983 • 28 minutes

    If This Ain't Heaven offers a portrait of an African American man that may very well challenge any number of sterotypes and assumptions about masculinity and African American men. The film shows...

  • Bullets in the Hood: A Bed-Stuy Story

    Directed by Terrence Fisher, Daniel Howard • Documentary • 2005 • 23 minutes

    Terrence Fisher, a teen living in the Louis Armstrong housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, has had seven of his friends shot and killed with guns. Terrence is not a gang member or a drug dealer˜just a normal...

  • Guns and Mothers

    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...

  • Prism

    Directed by Eléonore Yameogo, An van. Dienderen, and Rosine Mbakam • Documentary • 2021 • 78 minutes

    Is the technology of photography and motion pictures inherently racist?

    For PRISM, Belgian filmmaker An van. Dienderen invited Rosine Mbakam, from Cameroon, and Eléonore Yameogo from Burkina Fas...

  • Like Any Other Kid

    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...

  • When Justice Isn't Just

    Directed by David Massey • Documentary • 2016 • 42 minutes

    Directed by Oscar-nominated and NAACP Image Award winner David Massey, this dynamic documentary explores why so many unarmed black people have been targeted and killed by police officers. The filmmakers talk to legal experts, activists a...

  • Hidden Heritage: The Roots of Black American Painting

    Directed by Andrew Piddington • Documentary • With David Driskell • 1991 • 52 minutes

    David Driskell, the pathbreaking art history professor and artist, is the focus of HIDDEN HERITAGE: THE ROOTS OF BLACK AMERICAN PAINTING. He made it his life mission to trace the work of Black artists from the ...