Black Lives

Black Lives

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Black Lives
  • How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It!)

    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...

  • Affirmations

    Directed by Marlon Riggs • Documentary • 1990 • 10 minutes

    An exploration of Black gay male desires and dreams. Affirmations starts with an affectionate, humorous confessional and moves on to a wish for empowerment and incorporation.

  • Ethnic Notions

    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...

  • Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

    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 ...

  • 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...

  • Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed

    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...

  • Love & Diane

    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...

  • Through A Lens Darkly

    Directed by Thomas Allen Harris • Documentary • 2014 • 92 minutes

    The first documentary to explore the American family photo album through the eyes of black photographers, Through a Lens Darkly probes the recesses of American history to discover images that have been suppressed, forgotten and lo...

  • Black Is the Color: A History of African American Art

    Directed by Jacques Goldstein • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes

    In 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted a major exhibit called “Harlem On My Mind.” There was just one thing wrong: the show had no work by African-American artists.

    The “Harlem on My Mind” fiasco is emblematic ...

  • I Am Somebody

    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...

  • Seven Songs for Malcolm X

    Directed by John Akomfrah • Documentary • 1993 • 52 minutes

    An homage to the inspirational African-American civil rights leader, SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X collects testimonies, eyewitness accounts and dramatic reenactments to tell the life, legacy, loves, and losses of Malcolm X.

    Featuring inte...

  • They Are We

    Directed by Emma Christopher, Ph.D. • Documentary • 2014 • 79 minutes

    THEY ARE WE is the story of a remarkable reunion, 170 or so years after a family was driven apart by the ravages of the transatlantic slave trade. In Central Cuba, proud members of the Ganga-Longoba, a small Afro-Cuban ethnic ...

  • Color Adjustment

    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...

  • Integration Report 1

    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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • Power to Heal

    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...

  • Ghosts of Attica

    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 ...

  • A Tribute to Malcolm X

    Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1967 • 16 minutes

    Made for the William Greaves-produced WNET program Black Journal, A TRIBUTE TO MALCOLM X includes an interview with Malcolm X’s widow Dr. Betty Shabazz, shortly after his 1965 assassination.

    Courtesy of THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS, LLC an...

  • '63 Boycott

    Directed by Gordon Quinn • Documentary • 2017 • 30 minutes

    On October 22, 1963, more than 250,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to protest racial segregation. Many marched through the city calling for the resignation of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed trailers, ...

  • 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, ...

  • King of the Hill

    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 ...

  • Carmen and Geoffrey

    Directed by Linda Atkinson & Nick Doob • Documentary • With Carmen de Lavallade, Geoffrey Holder, Ailvin Ailey, Lester Horton, Duke Ellington, Josephine Baker • 2006 • 80 minutes

    Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, two living legends in the world of American dance, are the subjects of this ...

  • Love and Solidarity

    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 ...