African American Studies Collection
Adventures in Assimilation
Richard Dean Moss
1992, 8 min., Color, US
In this engaging performance video, Moss experiments with his own choreography and dance, using movement within a fixed frame to express self-discovery and the aesthetics of identity....
Afro-punk
James Spooner
2003, 66 min., Color, US
AFRO-PUNK explores race identity within the punk scene. This film tackles hard questions, such as issues of loneliness, exile, inter-racial dating and black power. We follow the lives of four people w...
All Our Sons: Fallen Heroes of 9/11
Lillian Benson
2003, 28 min., Color, US
Twelve African American firefighters were among the World Trade Center victims on September 11th, 2001. This moving documentary profiles these heroes, their families and the ultimate sacrifices they ...
Ambushed
Jared Katsiane
1992, 12 min., BW
George Bush Sr. declares a "War On Drugs." Meanwhile, two generations of black males find their lives invaded by that war's foot soldiers--the police....
Another Brother
Tami Gold
1998, 51 min., Color, US
Through found photographs, audiotaped interviews and archival footage, ANOTHER BROTHER tells the story of Vietnam veteran Clarence Fitch. Clarence Fitch was a man of and for his times, an African Ame...
AWOL
Brigid Maher
2005, 20 min., Color, US/Iraq
Keisha Johnson, an African American soldier, goes AWOL in Iraq after she flees a violent incident. On her "walkabout" journey, she encounters children who decide to help her. Keisha and the children g...
Behind These Walls: Mumia Abu-jamal and the Long Struggle For Freedom
Jule Buerjes & Heike Kleffner
Producer: KAOS FIlm and Video Team Cologne
1996, 70 min., Color, US
On August 17th 1995 Mumia Abu-Jamal journalist and former Black Panther Party Member was scheduled to be executed in His case -- he is one of 3,000 death row inmates in the US -- has raised internat...
Black Body
Thomas Allen Harris
1992, 7 min., Color, US
Thomas Allen Harris uses text, special effects, and a single bound male nude to emphasize the humanity underlying the multiple definitions of black identity and subjectivity. The audience may be asked...
Black Nations/Queer Nations?
Shari Frilot
Producer: Frilot and Black Nations/Queer Nations?
1995, 59 min., Color, US
This is an experimental documentary chronicling the March 1995 groundbreaking conference on lesbian and gay sexualities in the African diaspora. The conference brought together an array of dynamic sc...
Black Panther
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1968, 15 min., BW, US
A compelling document of the Black Panther Party leadership in 1967. This film contains a prison interview with Party Chairman Huey P. Newton as well as footage of the aftermath of the police assault ...
Bobby Seale
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1969, 15 min., BW, US
At the time of this moving prison interview, Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale had faced a series of charges of conspiracy in connection with his involvement in the Black Liberation and Anti-wa...
Book of Ezekiel
LaTrice A. Dixon
1999, 20 min., Color, US
A young flautist, Freeda Breedlove, draws on the inspiration of her ancestor Ezekiel, an enslaved poet, to make a difficult decision about her future. By reinterpreting Ezekiel's legacy, Freeda finds...
Bringin' in Da Spirit
Rhonda L. Haynes
2003, 60 min., Color, US
Through the use of first person narrative and rare archival images, this documentary provides a moving glimpse of the women who have skillfully brought scores of children across the threshold of exist...
Call to Manhood
Narcel G. Reedus
1994, 57 min., BW, US
CALL TO MANHOOD is an emotional testament to the brothers who are reaching back into the community to save young black boys. This documentary traces the steps taken by the Fulton County Human Services...
Chasing the Moon
Dawn Suggs
1991, 4 min., BW, US
This fascinating film presents the meditations of a Black lesbian grappling with the memory of an attack that makes her wary about being out on the street....
The Cinematic Jazz of Julie Dash
Yvonne Welbon
1992, 26 min., Color, US
This is an in-depth interview with filmmaker Julie Dash, whose first feature film, Daughters of the Dust, has become a critical and word-of-mouth sensation since its release in the Winter of 1992. Her...
Claiming Open Spaces
Austin Allen
1995, 87 min., Color, US
CLAIMING OPEN SPACES explores African-American culture as it clashes with the design of the modern American city. The film includes a comprehensive section on New Orleans -- the vital place of histori...
Close to Home
Rodney Evans
1998, 24 min., Color, US
CLOSE TO HOME documents the filmmaker's journey as he comes out to a conservative, Jamaican family and negotiates a painful relationship with a 21-year old heterosexual man....
Closer to the Dream (Long Version)
Guetty Felin & Hervé Cohen
2008, 102 min., Color, US
An electoral road movie about Barack Obama and the movement that united Americans across party, racial and ethnic lines. In 2008 Haitian-American filmmaker Guetty Felin, her husband, French filmmaker ...
Closer to the Dream (Short Version)
Hervé Cohen & Guetty Felin
2008, 54 min., Color, US
An electoral road move about Barack Obama and the movement that united Americans across party, racial and ethnic lines. In 2008 Haitian-American filmmaker Guetty Felin, her husband, French filmmaker H...
Crocodile Conspiracy
Zeinabu Irene Davis
1986, 13 min., Color, US/Cuba
This charming tale focuses on Willa Ledbetter, an African American middle-aged school teacher in Watts, and her longing to visit her parent's homeland of Cuba. In the face of unexpected political and...
Deft Changes: An Improvised Experience
Alonzo Speight
1991, 10 min., Color, US
Through short improvised sketches, this video explores the generational conflicts between a father and son who are each musicians. It features performances by guitarist Mark Whittfield, and the late m...
Doing What It Takes: Black Folks Getting and Staying Healthy
Donna Golden
Producer: Not Channel Zero
1994, 23 min., Color, US
Black communities are disproportionately affected by cancer, heart disease, low birth weight and infant mortality rates. Facing political, economic and racial barriers to good health, this video docu...
Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project
Charles B. Brack
Producer: Charles B. Brack, CoProduced with Third World Newsreel
2008, 58 min., Color, US
This documentary tells the little known story of Sakia Gunn, a 15 year old student who was fatally stabbed in a gay hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. Sakia was an Aggressive, according to GLAAD, a hom...
Encounter at the Intergalactic Café
Thomas Allen Harris
1996, 17 min., Color, US
A videotape of a live performance -- a mythopoetic rendering of the original encounters between African, Indigenous and European peoples in the day "border regions". Saint, comic, demon, deity, infant...
Extra Change
Carmen Coustaut
1988, 28 min., Color, US
A realistic view of a 12 year old African American girl's voyage through early adolescence: peer pressure, friendship and love. Focusing on society's expectations for young women, Extra Change is an e...
Ezekiel's Dream
Narcel G. Reedus
1994, 15 min., BW, US
EZEKIEL'S DREAM starring Steve Coulter is a visual poem describing the last thoughts of a black man perparing for the fight of his life. This film has garnered numerous awards and has screened in Berl...
Fade to Black
Tony Cokes & Donald Trammel
1991, 33 min., Color, US
This videotape is a meditation on contemporary race relations. In voiceover, two Black men describe events that typically go unnoticed or discounted by the white mainstream. They examine gestures, hes...
Fight Black: Urban Martial Arts
Third World Newsreel Workshop
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
1991, 15 min., Color, US
Marcus Salgado is a young martial artist from the South Bronx who leads the viewer through a stunning array of community martial arts activity in New York City. The tape shows classes that promote hea...
Finding Christa
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1991, 55 min., Color, US
This documentary presents a moving yet unsentimental view of motherhood and adoption. It explores the feelings surrounding the reunion of a young woman with her natural mother 20 years after being gi...
For Colored Boys Who've Considered Homicide
Narcel G. Reedus
1995, 27 min., Color, US
In this spiritual drama an ancestor (Thomas Merdis) travels through time and space to interrogate a murderer (Chong Thi Nguyen) to find why young black boys are killing each other. "For Colored Boys.....
Four Women
Julie Dash
1979, 4 min., Color, US
An imaginatively choreographed dance interpretation of the ballad by Nina Simone on four common stereotypes of Black women....
Frankie & Jocie
Jocelyn Taylor
1994, 20 min., Color, US
Examining the relationships between brother and sister, hetero and queer, male and female, this video weaves a provocative discussion between a Black lesbian and her straight brother. In an eloquent ...
From Harlem to Harvard
Four Square Productions
Producer: Four Square Productions
1982, 30 min., Color
An excellent discussion film for college bound students, this thoughtful documentary captures the alienation, prejudice and insecurity that often confront African American students at predominantly wh...
Ganja and Hess
Bill Gunn
1970, 110 min., Color, US
This extraordinary foray into the realms of Black consciousness has acquired deserved status as a cinema classic. The vampire film genre is used to create a mythical vision of the forces that shape Dr...
Heart of Harlem
Brian Lindstrom
Bob McCullough
2001, 9 min., Color, US
HEART OF HARLEM traces the life and times of Holcombe Rucker, who founded a summer basketball league while working for New York Citys Parks Department in order to give young people a positive alternat...
Heaven, Earth and Hell
Thomas Allen Harris
1994, 26 min., Color, US
Reflecting on the "trickster" figure in African and Native American culture recounting the story of his first love, this beautiful work incorporates the critical texts of Frantz Fanon, bell hooks and ...
Illusions
Julie Dash
1983, 34 min., BW, US
Set in a fictitious Hollywood studio in 1942, this elegant drama contrasts society's views of Black women with their self-perceptions. An ambitious movie executive, Mignon Dupree is perceived by her...
Ina Mae Best
Charlene Gilbert
1993, 25 min., Color
A documentary portrait of a courageous African American woman, who after 18 years working at a textile factory in Goldsboro, North Carolina, became a passionate and outspoken leader in a struggle to u...
Intro to Cultural Skitzo-Frenia
Jamika Ajalon
1993, 10 min., Color, US
An experimental documentary exploring the lives, views of people who don't fit or live outside the definitions regulating race ("i.e. black enough"), gender, or sexuality....
The KKK Boutique ain't Just Rednecks
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1994, 60 min., Color
Write Billops and Hatch: "Even as late as a hundred years ago, discrimination on the basis of race was considered a natural and even desirable trait for humans to possess. We Americans have tried to ...
L’Esprit Prêt-à-Parteger
Jamika Ajalon
2009, 28 min., Color, Germany/Senegal
Documents an art workshop held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2008, where artists from African and Europe explore issues surrounding fashion, sport and diasporic art and identities. The artists collaborate wit...
Land Where My Fathers Died
Daresha Kyi
1991, 24 min., Color
A fiercely independent young African American woman and her nouveau-nationalist photographer boyfriend decide to visit the father she hasn't seen in years. The tragicomic reunion shatters her illusio...
Locations of the M/othership: Black Women as Fugitive Archetype of Resistance
Jamika Ajalon
2009, 20 min., Color/BW, UK/US
A live audio/visual installation using images of subversive and legendary Black women and excerpts from sci-fi films and TV series. Ajalon explores the intersection of Black women’s representations an...
Memory Tracks
Jamika Ajalon
1996, 8 min., UK
A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown follows the afroed spirit of a revolutionary past through London's streets: Brixton and Portobello. I used the camera as the means for reflexive analysis of...
Military Option
Al Santana & Alonzo Speight
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2005, 11 min., Color, US
Women, money and travel. It's still the hook that military recruiters are using on young men, as two students discover at a Queens recruitment office. A look at the military recruitment process thro...
Monique
Yvonne Welbon
1990, 3 min., Color, US
Using a childhood experience of racial bigotry at school, this film looks at the ways in which racism is ingrained in American society, even in the play of children. MONIQUE is a compelling exploratio...
Mother Tongue
Patrice Mallard
Producer: TWN Workshop
1994, 7 min., BW, US
Inspired by the experience of her great-grandparents, Mallard uses the history of slavery and the nature of language to examine the profound effects of colonization on the psyche of a people....
No Time to Lose
Allan Siegel & Patricia Benoit
1988, 28 min., Color, US
Average New Yorkers describe their childhood experiences as "carefree", and "lots of fun and games". But 40% of all Black children and 50% of all Hispanic children in New York City live below the na...
Ocoee: Legacy of the Election Day Massacre
Bianca White & Sandra Krasa
2002, 26 min., Color, US
In the early twentieth century, Ocoee was home to one of Florida's most prosperous African American communities. On Election Day 1920, Mose Norman and July Perry attempted to vote and the African Amer...
Older Women and Love
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1987, 26 min., Color, US
Using interviews and dramatizations, this film achieves a touching and often humorous look at social attitudes towards relationships between older women and younger men. The filmmakers are involved o...
On the Downlow
Abigail Child
2006, 54 min., Color, US
"On the Downlow" presents an intimate portrait of four men negotiating their bisexual desire within the African-American community of Cleveland, Ohio. These men selfdescribe as "dipping on both sides ...
One People
Al Santana
Producer: Laura L. Fowler & Al Santana
2007, 30 min., Color, US
Is everything political? Against the backdrop of a gentrified Harlem community, the story centers on two sisters who have opposite views about social responsibility and the role of artists. Aliyah, a ...
Politics from a Black Woman's Insides
Yuko Edwards
1998, 26 min., Color, US
Follow one woman's search for the Hottentot Venus, the legendary link between ape and human and icon of black female subjectivity. Edwards' film explores the construction of race through both scienti...
Praise House
Julie Dash
1991, 30 min., Color, US
This video uses stunningly beautiful and innovative techniques to tell the story of a young woman moved to dance by a powerful and creative spirit. Despite her mother's disinterest, Hannah is driven t...
PRIMETIME: Fighting Back Against Foreclosure
Jennifer Fasulo & Manauvaskar Kublall
Producer: TWN Production Workshop
2009, 23 min., Color, US
This timely film takes the viewer behind the foreclosure statistics and into the homes and hearts of two NYC women who have been pummeled by the foreclosure tsunami. It breaks down the complex issues...
Race Against Prime Time
David Shulman
1985, 60 min., Color, US
An award winning documentary about TV news and racial conflict in Miami.
In 1980, Arthur McDuffie, an African American community worker was brutally kicked, beaten and clubbed to death b...
Rebirth of a Nation
DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid
2004, 100 min., Color/BW, US
First released in 1915, D.W. Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION ignited worldwide controversy with its graphic depiction of racism and white supremacy in the post-Civil War south. Nearly 100 years later, co...
Remembering Wei Yi-fang, Remembering Myself.
Yvonne Welbon
1995, 30 min., Color, us/China
An autobiographical experimental documentary about the artist's experiences as an African-American woman living in Taiwan for six years. Recreations of time and place are presented through memories, h...
Seen, But Not Heard: AIDS and the Untold War Against Black Women
Cyrille Phipps
2008, 12 min., Color, US
SEEN, BUT NOT HEARD is a short documentary that will explore the historical antecedents, current trends, and emerging activism concerning HIV/AIDS and women of African descent. Through raw and reveal...
Shades
Jamika Ajalon
1994, 12 min., Color
SHADES explores the issues around dark and light skin in the African American community. Drawing on erotic imagery and the relation between a light skinned woman and a darker skinned Lesbian, this vi...
Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition and Creative Progress
Jayne Cortez
Producer: Manthia Diawara
2009, 100 min., Color, US
From the 1400s to the 1800s millions of Africans were forcefully removed from Africa and shipped across the Atlantic to the so-called "New World". In 1808, the passage of the Transantlantic Slave Trad...
Slowly This
Arthur Jafa
1995, 26 min., Color, US
When two friends meet in a crowded Manhattan restaurant, the conversation takes an unexpected and intimate turn. Speaking from their experiences as a Japanese American man and an African American man,...
Splash
Thomas Allen Harris
1991, 10 min., Color, US
Splash is a fable-like tale of memory and emotion. Using a range of e techniques, it deftly explores the interplay between identity, fantasy, gender, homosexual desire and pre-adolescence. These force...
A String of Pearls
Camille Billops & James Hatch
2002, 56 min., Color, US
With this film, Camille Billops completes her family's trilogy - three documentaries that cover more than thirty years: "Suzanne Suzanne", shown in the New Director's series at the Museum of Modern Ar...
Suzanne, Suzanne
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1982, 30 min., BW, US
This poignant documentary profiles a young black woman's struggle to confront the legacy of a physically abusive father and her headlong flight into drug abuse. , after years of physical and psycholog...
Take Your Bags
Camille Billops
1998, 11 min., Color, US
My take on slavery: When the Africans boarded the ships bound for America, they carried in their bags all their memories of home. When they arrived in the New World, their bags had been switched, and ...
Untold Legacy
Leslie K. Brown
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2005, 12 min., Color, US
In February 2005, the NY City Council considered a bill that would require companies doing business with NY to investigate and reveal any past complicity and profit from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade...
Vintage: Families of Value
Thomas Allen Harris
1995, 72 min., Color, US
Vintage is an experimental documentary which looks at three African American families through the eyes of lesbian and gay siblings - including the filmmaker and his younger brother. Three groups of q...
Voices of the Gods
Al Santana
1985, 60 min., Color, US
This documentary captures the rich legacy of ancient African religions practiced today in the United States. It provides viewers with rare insight into the practices and beliefs of the Akan and Yoruba...
Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization
Jayne Cortez
2007, 75 min., Color, US
Globalization, now a buzzword in the West, has been a phenomenon that has shaped the culture and politics of Africa and its diaspora for centuries. YARI YARI PAMBERI brings together women from across ...
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