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 Andrew Young, Charles Abernathy, and Coretta Scott King and produced by Local 1199, New York’s Drug and Hospital Union, I AM SOMEBODY is a crucial document in the struggle for labor rights.
"Terrific! By turns intimate and sweeping... With its weave of interviews and on-the-street scenes—and, notably, a female voice-over—I AM SOMEBODY is an exemplar of a certain nonfiction approach." —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
Up Next in National Film Registry
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On the Bowery
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • Documentary • With Ray Salyer, Gorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews • 1956 • 65 minutes
On the Bowery chronicles three days in the drinking life of Ray Salyer, a part-time railroad worker adrift on New York’s skid row. When the film first opened in 1956, it exploded on t...
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The Red Book
Directed by Janie Geiser • Documentary • 1994 • 11 minutes
An elliptical, pictographic animated film that uses flat, painted figures and collage elements in both two and three-dimensional settings to explore the realms of memory, language, and identity from the point of view of an amnesiac.
The...
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Tongues Untied
Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1989 • 55 minutes
The seminal documentary on Black gay life, Emmy Award-winning director Marlon T. Riggs’ 1989 Tongues Untied uses poetry, personal testimony, rap and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others), to describe the homophobia and r...
