…I Told You So Alan Kondo Producer: Visual Communications 1973, 18 min., BW, US "All this identity thing. What is it you're looking for?" asks the elderly aunt of leading Japanese American poet, Lawson Inada. Through this intimate portrait, we explore Inada's answer to this compl...
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....
All the Ladies Say Ana Garcia Producer: Ana "Rokafella" Garcia 2010, 45 min., Color, US Veteran b-girl Ana "Rokafella" Garcia's first documentary film ALL THE LADIES SAY features the work of female breakdancers in the United States, including Aiko, Baby Love, Beta, Lady Champ, Severe and...
Anomaly: A Documentary Film about Multiracial Identity Jessica Chen Drammeh Producer: Jessica Chen Drammeh & Sharon K. Smith 2013, 47 min., Color, US ANOMALY is an award-winning documentary film that provides a thought-provoking look at multiracial identity by combining personal narratives with the larger drama of mixed race in American culture. Th...
Arctic Hip Hop Randy Kelly Producer: Jacques Ménard & Micheline Shoebridge 2007, 44 min., Color, Canada In Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, an isolated community of 1500 mainly Inuit residents, Hip-Hop has been popular for many years. But it’s the glamourized gangsta lifestyle on display in music videos that man...
Art for Social Change Mary Wells 2007, 33 min., Color, Jamaica Jamaican filmmaker Mary Wells made ART FOR SOCIAL CHANGE, a perceptive half-hour film, in response to the launch of Frances-Anne Solomon’s heart-wrenching movie A Winter Tale when it opened in cinemas...
The Art of Love and Struggle Jessica Habie 2006, 78 min., Color, US In this film, artists, singers, emcees, activists, poets and writers come together in an explosive exploration of feminine creation. Each lady brings to the screen her innermost struggles in an attemp...
Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 Dagmar Schultz 2012, 79 min., Color, Germany 2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Audre Lorde’s passing, the acclaimed Black lesbian feminist poet and activist. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Lorde’s incisive writings and speeches defined and inspir...
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...
Blaze: The Truth Through Hip Hop Maurice Lynch 2006, 90 min., Color, US The Hip-Hop Christian movement has been uplifting youth by delivering positive religious messages that are not about drugs, sex, or hate but of hope and peace.
In a society where artists are glorif...
Body and Soul (De Corpo e Alma) Matthieu Bron 2011, 54 min., Color, Mozambique Victoria, Mariana and Vasco are three young Mozambicans with physical disabilities living in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital city. The film explores how they see themselves, raising questions about self-...
Border Brujo Isaac Artenstein Producer: Cinewest 1989, 60 min., Color, US Border Brujo is a ritual-linguistic journey across the U.S./Mexico border written and performed by artist Guillermo Gómez Peña. In the guise of a cross-cultural shaman, Gómez Peña shifts into 15 diff...
Call For Change Series 2005 Various Producer: Third World Newsreel 2005, 133 min., Color, US A series of 16 shorts on how NYC communities of color view their "State of America" and what they're doing to make changes. These shorts aim to provoke discussion and more. Topics range from the cont...
Calypso @ Dirty Jim's Pascale Obolo 2005, 85 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago Featuring the last of the great calypsonians, bringing them all together to sing such classics as “Rum & Coca Cola,” “Jean and Dinah,” and “Shame and Scandal in the Family,” to name a few, the film pr...
Calypso Dreams Geoffrey Dunn and Michael Horne 2004, 85 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago An intimate portrait of some of the true calypsonians in Trinidad & Tobago, in performance and in conversation. Shot over three years in Port of Spain, Trinidad, the documentary includes such legendar...
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 Our Voice Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel Producer: Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel & Chitra Aiyar 2013, 21 min., US CLAIMING OUR VOICE follows members of Andolan, a Queens-based organization founded and led by South Asian domestic workers as a means to support each other and collectively organize against exploitati...
Conakry Kas: The Conakry People Manthia Diawara 2003, 82 min., Color, US In January 2003, Director Manthia Diawara visited Guinea-Conakry to see what was left of the artists (Ballets Africains, Bembeya Jazz National) and intellectuals (D.T. Niane, Telivel Diallo) of the Gu...
The Couple in the Cage Coco Fusco & Paula Heredia 1993, 30 min., Color, US Over the last five hundred years, non-western human beings have been exhibited in the taverns, theaters, gardens, museums, zoos, circuses and world's fairs of Europe, and the circuses and freak shows ...
Creative Detours Bridgett Davis Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop 1992, 10 min., Color, US In this short narrative, a young woman moves to New York City from the Midwest in order to "develop her writing" and to share an apartment with her boyfriend. Distracted from her new creative life-sty...
Cruisin' J-town Duane Kubo Producer: Visual Communications 1974, 24 min., Color, US This is the story of the formation of the popular jazz fusion band, Hiroshima, in the late 70s. The musicians reflect on their culture, musical influences, and the political movements of the 1960's ou...
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...
Democracy in Dakar Ben Herson, Magee McIlvaine & Chris Moore Producer: Nomadic Wax and Sol Productions 2007, 66 min., Color, US/Senegal "Democracy in Dakar" explores the transformative role of Hip-Hop in politics in Senegal, West Africa during the 2007 presidential election campaign. This documentary mixes interviews, freestyles, and ...
Devotion Barbara Hammer 2000, 85 min., Color, Japan/US DEVOTION investigates the extremely complex and hierarchical relationships among a loyal group of filmmakers who dedicated up to 30 years making films for one man--Ogawa Shinsuke. These heartbreaking ...
Diamonds in the Rough: A Ugandan Hip Hop Revolution Brett Mazurek 2009, 53 min., US/Uganda From the ashes of four decades of war, AIDS and corruption in Uganda, The Bataka Squad artists, Babaluku and Saba Saba, rise to forge a revolutionary path using music. They are on a mission to empower...
Dreams Inside and Out Sylvie Thouard 1990, 52 min., Color, US The Family, a repertory theater company composed of former inmates and actors, and born in the aftermath of the 1971 Attica uprising, is well-known for Miguel Piñero's play SHORT EYES, winner of the B...
Edouard Glissant: One World in Relation Manthia Diawara 2010, 50 min., Color, US In 2009, filmmaker Manthia Diawara, along with his camera, documented his conversations with Martinican philosopher, writer, and poet Édouard Glissant aboard the Queen Mary II on their transatlantic j...
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 present day "border regions". Saint, comic, demon, deity, ...
A Family Called Abrew Maureen Blackwood Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective 1992, 42 min., Color, UK This documentary profiles a fascinating family that has been based in Scotland since the end of the 19th century. It also traces the history of people of African descent living in Europe before the gr...
Follow Your Heart: China's New Youth Movement Duncan Jepson 2007, 89 min., Color, China A revealing documentary on the work and life of successful and independent Chinese Hip-Hop artists and their cultural influence in a society rapidly changing from communism to consumerism. Clashing wi...
Four Women Julie Dash 1979, 7 min., Color, US An imaginatively choreographed dance interpretation of the ballad by Nina Simone on four common stereotypes of Black women....
Fragments of Barbara McCullough Barbara McCullough 1980, 10 min., Color, US This work is a montage of magic centered imagery. It contains some of the footage from Shopping Bag Spirits plus new material....
Frontier Life Hans Fjellestad Producer: Ryan Page 2003, 92 min., Color, US/Mexico A feature-length documentary that explores beyond Tijuana s sin-city heritage and searches for the heart and identity of a city that is much more than a cantina-strewn throwback to the Old West. It a...
Garbage a.k.a. Garbage Demonstration (Newsreel #5) Newsreel Producer: Newsreel 1968, 10 min., BW, US During a prolonged garbage collector's strike in New York City, a group of youths from the Lower East Side of Manhattan decide to use the situation to make a political statement. They collect garbage...
Graffiti Verite' 1: Read the Writing on the Wall Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2005, 45 min., Color, US An award-winning documentary that explores the eclectic world of Hip-Hop and the urban graffiti artist. GRAFFITI VERITE’ is the first up-close and personal expose’ into the graffiti art world as exper...
Graffiti Verite' 10: Hip-Hop Dance: Moving in the Moment Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2010, 75 min., Color, US Whether you call it breakin’, bboyin’, bgirlin’ or simply Hip-Hop dance, what we witness here is authentically funky and soulful. These dancers strive to be “in the moment.” When it’s good, what’s exp...
Graffiti Verite' 11: Don't Believe Da Noize!: Voices from Da Hip-Hop Undaground Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2010, 55 min., Color, US This documentary is an exploration of the creative expressions in contemporary American Hip-Hop. It focuses on the innovation, movement, and the raw and unfiltered personalized “truth” of some of the...
Graffiti Verite' 2: Freedom of Expression? Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2005, 57 min., Color, US Flying high above Los Angeles, GV2 looks down on the streets, introducing us to the artists who “tag” the walls of our cities with spraycans while we sleep.
GV2 features 19 graffiti artists and rev...
Graffiti Verite' 3: A Voyage Into the Iconography of Graffiti Art Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2005, 54 min., Color, US This experimental documentary probes the socio-political context that distracts the average person from appreciating the significance of graffiti’s historical and artistic impact.
In GV3, Bryan for...
Graffiti Verite' 4: Basic Techniques for Creating Graffiti Art on Walls & Canvas Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2005, 68 min., Color, US This documentary is the ultimate step-by-step program on spray can art. Outsiders get a rare glimpse into the outstanding art and eclectic personalities behind the controversial graffiti art movement...
Graffiti Verite' 5: The Sacred Elements of Hip-Hop Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2005, 42 min., Color, US GV5 is a portrait of the educational value and therapeutic aspect of the four elements of contemporary Hip-Hop: DJing, break-dancing, rappin’ and graffiti art.
“Hip-Hop, if used creatively, can giv...
Graffiti Verite' 6: The Odyssey: Poets, Passion & Poetry Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2006, 78 min., Color, US GV6 features 31 multi-ethnic, award-winning, published and highly respected poets. Their creations are a seamlessly woven, uniquely honest, visual tapestry that synthesizes one-on-one poetry readings,...
Graffiti Verite' 7: Random Urban Static: … Spoken Word Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2008, 120 min., Color, US GV7 probes the reality of spoken word poets, or, poets that write for the stage. Spoke Word poetry, often flavored with Hip-Hop, connects with today’s youth because the poetics of this art form speak ...
Graffiti Verite' 8: The Fifth Element: The Art of the Beat-Boxer Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2010, 45 min., Color, US Combining throat-based effects that create a “wall of sound,” the job of the human beat-boxer is to compose a flawless soundscape.
GV8 explores the history of beat-boxing and its claim as its own ...
Graffiti Verite' 9: Soulful Ways: The DJ Bob Bryan Producer: Bob Bryan 2010, 45 min., Color, US Watching a great DJ spin is analogous to watching a professional musician perform. As composer and producer Glenn Towery says, “DJs have to understand the dynamics of music to understand the beat”.
...
Herstory (Newsreel #61) Newsreel 9 min., BW, US Through the use of a cranky, songs, rhythm, music and narration, the San Francisco Women's Street Theatre gives a short history of women's struggles from prehistory to the early 1970s....
Hinkson Christopher Laird 2013, 97 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago Trinidadian Donald ‘Jackie’ Hinkson, in his 70th year and on the occasion of a massive retrospective in four exhibition spaces talks about his life’s work and demonstrates his techniques in expressing...
Hip Hop Sp Francisco Cesar 1990, 11 min., Color Young Black members of Sao Paulo's hip hop movement depict their experience and views of Black Brazilian history through their music, dance and graffiti....
Hiphopistan: Representing Locality in a Global City Çiğdem Akbay 2007, 25 min., Color, Turkey HIPHOPISTAN is a documentary film that examines the impact of Hip-Hop culture on Istanbul youth and reveals how young Turkish rappers, DJs, break-dancers, and graffiti artists creatively blend popular...
Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story Maria Binder 1997, 28 min., Color, Germany A moving documentary about the life and untimely death of Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political personality May Ayim. Ayim was one of the founders of the Black German Movement, and her research...
I Love Hip Hop in Morocco Joshua Asen & Jennifer Needleman Producer: Rizz Productions, Inc. 2007, 80 min., Color, US/Morocco This feature-length documentary follows the creation of Morocco's first-ever Hip-Hop festival, from inception all the way to the stage. Along the way we meet DJ Key, a self-taught turntable prodigy wh...
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 ...
The Insatiable Season Mariel Brown 2007, 52 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago It’s January 2006 and Brian Mac Farlane’s carnival workshop is quiet and practically empty – littered with left-over costumes and a couple of hangers-on from last year’s carnival. The atmosphere begin...
Inside Out in the Open Alan Roth 2001, 60 min., Color, US INSIDE OUT IN THE OPEN focuses on the revolutionary, avant-garde developments in Jazz that evolved in the early 1960's, expanding the boundaries in rhythm, sound, harmonics, and collective improvisati...
Is It Sweet? Tales of an African Superstar in New York Jesse W Shipley Color, US Reggie Rockstone is a celebrity rap musician in Accra, Ghana, where he inspired a young generation of musicians and continues to draw huge crowds. But when he comes to New York to play for the Ghanaia...
Know Your Enemy Art Jones 1990, 27 min., Color, US Using the controversy surrounding the rap group Public Enemy, KNOW YOUR ENEMY critiques the mass media's bias against rap music and culture. Interviews combined with performance footage, and archival ...
Knowledge Reigns Supreme Art Jones 1991, 8 min., Color, US Using the words and music of rapper KRS-1, this video short questions the current wave of multiculturalism in the educational system. It interrogates the myths of societal homogeneity, and assumed cul...
L’Esprit Prêt-à-Partager Jamika Ajalon 2009, 28 min., Color, Germany/Senegal Documents an art workshop held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2008, where artists from Africa and Europe explore issues surrounding fashion, sport and diasporic art and identities. The artists collaborate with...
La Bruja: A Witch from the Bronx Felix Rodriguez 2005, 50 min., Color, US Art, labor and family blend in this intimate documentary about performance artist Caridad De La Luz, better known as 'La Bruja'. Born and raised in the Bronx, this daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants ...
Latino Poets Speakout Renata Gangemi & Ruben Gonzalez Producer: Third World Newsreel 2005, 10 min., Color, US Three shorts featuring performances by some of New York City's vanguard Latino poets:
KILLKILLKILL by Jesus Papoleto Melendez (5 Min)
GOD BLESS AMERICA by Mariposa (2 min), and
TAMALES IN JA...
A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde (90) Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson Producer: Third World Newsreel 1996, 90 min., Color, US An epic portrait of the eloquent, award-winning Black, lesbian, poet, mother, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde, whose writings -- spanning five decades -- articulated some of the most important socia...
A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson Producer: Third World Newsreel 1995, 52 min., Color, US An epic portrait of the eloquent, award-winning Black, lesbian, poet, mother, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde, whose writings -- spanning five decades -- articulated some of the most important socia...
Maison Tropicale Manthia Diawara 2008, 58 min., Color, Republic of Congo/France In 2008, filmmaker Manthia Diawara and artist Angela Ferreira travelled to Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo to “search through the debris left behind by those who took away the [Maison Tropicales]....
Mas Man Dalton Narine 2010, 56 min., Color, Trinidad/US Mingling traditional Carnival elements with abstract ideas, Emmy Award winner Peter Minshall goes chic to chic with upper crust art in Trinidad’s annual spring festival. The film captures his flair fo...
Masizakhe: Building Each Other Angelica Macklin and Scott Macklin Producer: Open Hand Reel 2008, 80 min., Color, South Africa/US "Masizakhe, Building Each Other" explores the role of art, social activism and Hip-Hop in education and presents students, teachers, artists and principals working to support each other while re-estab...
Mask: A Field Report on Masked Performance Liu Xiaojin 2000, 120 min., Color, China Since the time of the Qing Dynasty, villagers of Xiaotun have performed a folk opera in which all the actors wear masks. Known as the “Guansuo Opera”, its performances were suspended during the Cultu...
Media Assassin Art Jones 1989, 17 min., Color, US A politically charged analysis of hip-hop culture that challenges the media portrayal of hip-hop as violent and noisy, rather than as a statement of identity and empowerment....
Mi Otro Yo (My Other Self) Isaac Artenstein Producer: Cinewest 1989, 30 min., Color, US Expanding his exploration of marginalized identity and border culture, videomaker Artenstein's MI OTRO YO looks at the work of Chicano artists living in California. Their cultural ties to Mexico and h...
Mr. Devious John Fredericks 2006, 73 min., South Africa MR. DEVIOUS is an exploration of the life and impact of South African Hip-Hop artist Mr. Devious on the youth and community of Cape Flats in Cape Town, South Africa. The film traces Mr. Devious' intro...
Musica Gustavo Paredes 1985, 59 min., Color, US This film is an odyssey through the eyes, words and music of individuals who pioneered Afro-Cuban music in the United States. The video offers a rich overview of a wide number of musical styles from ...
Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor Manthia Diawara 2015, 59 min., Color, USA/France/Germany/Portugal This imagined dialogue between Léopold Sédar Senghor, one of the founding fathers of Negritude, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka was reconstructed almost entirely from archival materials. It probes the...
ocularis: eye surrogates Tran T. Kim-Trang 1997, 21 min., Color, US The latest tape in Kim-Trang's eight tape series on metaphorical and physical blindness Ocularis: Eye Surrogates addressing issues of surveillance and technology that allow us to see what we normally ...
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 ...
An Opera of the World Manthia Diawara 2018, 70 min., Color Manthia Diawara’s film is based on the African opera Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, which recounts an eternal migration drama. The Bintou Were opera, filmed on location in Bamako, in 2007, serves as a mi...
The Other Side of the Water: The Journey of a Haitian Rara Band in Brooklyn Jeremy Robins and Magali Damas 2010, 52 min., Color/BW, US/Haiti Part carnival, part vodou ceremony, and part grassroots protest, Haitian “Rara” is one of the most breathtaking and contested forms of music in the Americas. The Other Side of the Water follows a gro...
The Other Side of the Water: The Journey of a Haitian Rara Band in Brooklyn (72) Jeremy Robins and Magali Damas 2010, 72 min., Color/BW, US/Haiti Part carnival, part vodou ceremony, and part grassroots protest, Haitian “Rara” is one of the most breathtaking and contested forms of music in the Americas. The Other Side of the Water follows a grou...
Out of La Negrura/Out of Blackness in the Bronx Jane Gabriels 2018, 24 min., Color, US Dance artists Sita Frederick, Ana "Rokafella" Garcia, and Marion Ramirez collaborate to create a performance work that explores Caribbean and Latina-American experiences through dance.
OUT OF LA NE...
Percussion, Impressions and Reality Allan Siegel Producer: Third World Newsreel 1978, 30 min., Color, US This is the first comprehensive U.S. film to explore the origins and growth of traditional Puerto Rican music. Interviews with musicians living in New York reveal how traditional music is used as a so...
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...
Red Detachment of Women People's Republic of China Producer: People's Republic of China 1968, 105 min., Color, China This film presents the famous ballet from China. It is a blend of traditional Western theatre, Peking opera, folk dance, calisthenics, and acrobatics. It tells the story of a women's military unit dur...
A Refutation of Time Dan Boord & Greg Durbin & Luis Valdovino 1997, 8 min., Color, US/Argentina A student from the Large Midwestern Universe receives an unusual e-mail message in the Logic Lab. The communication concerns, the nature of time, tango singer Carlos Gardel, the humorist Will Rodgers,...
Respect is Due Cyrille Phipps Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop 1992, 10 min., Color, US In keeping with the doctrines of Wall Street and Madison Avenue, sex sells rap music. In this video, Black youth examine the ways women of African descent are frequently portrayed in rap lyrics and mu...
Rock Me, Goong Hay Shelton Ito Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop 1992, 5 min., Color, US The Goong Hay Kid is the fictional Chinese rapper created and played by Alvin Eng. ROCK ME, GOONG HAY combines hip-hop styling with a forceful protest against stereotypes....
Ruins Jesse Lerner 1999, 78 min., BW, US Ancient Maya and Aztec objects have been shown in circuses, art galleries, World's Fairs and natural history museums. This experimental documentary suggests how diplomacy and Pan-Americanism recast a...
Samuel Lind's Coastal World Sonia Fritz Producer: Frances Lausell 2006, 24 min., Color, Puerto Rico This documentary captures the colors, music and culture that inspire the art of Samuel Lind, an Afro-Puerto Rican painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Originally from Loiza, Puerto Rico, Lind celebra...
Sapphire and the Slave Girl Leah Gilliam 1995, 17 min., BW, US This film is loosely based on the 1950's British detective film SAPPHIRE, in which two Scotland Yard detectives investigate the murder of a young woman who is passing for white. Referencing everyone f...
Sembene: the Making of African Cinema Manthia Diawara & Ngugi Wa Thiong'o 1994, 60 min., Color, UK This rich documentary follows the legendary Senagalese filmmaker Sembene Ousmane from the Pan African Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso back to the streets of Dakar and his Galle Ceddo home a...
Shaman Llego Frank Perez Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop 1992, 17 min., Color, US This documentary profiles the "Shaman Repertory Theatre", a community oriented group based in Spanish Harlem. Through sketches from performances and interviews with troupe members, this piece illustra...
She's Beautiful When She's Angry (Newsreel #48) Newsreel 1969, 17 min., BW, US This film documents a play given at the March 28th, 1969 abortion rally by some very angry women. A beauty contestant is primed by her mother, her teacher, her boyfriend, an ad man, and a capitalist f...
Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections On Ritual Space Barbara McCullough 1980, 60 min., Color, US This video investigates the use of ritual in the work of artists using different media. Here ritual is defined as the creation and utilization of objects, words or tones used in a repetitive or habitu...
Sky-blue Hometown Soh-Young Kim 2000, 93 min., Color, Korea This documentary traces the trajectory of a Korean diasporic community in the former Soviet Union. Placed in internment camps by Stalin during World War II, the plight of a generation of Korean-Russia...
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,...
Solitary Alchemist, The Mariel Brown 2009, 70 min., Color, Trinidad/UK What happens when talent isn’t enough? When, in spite of a life of work, you look around in the autumn of your life and discover that your world is not what you thought it would be. This is where we m...
Sweet Sugar Rage Honor Ford-Smith & Harclyde Walcott 1985, 45 min., Color, Jamaica A popular Jamaican women's troupe uses improvisation and theater as consciousness-raising tools for both rural and urban audiences. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women-...
Undertow Me-K Ahn 1995, 18 min., BW, US "undertow" is an experimental short film which explores how the loss of family and culture can affect one's body consciousness and sexuality. It juxtaposes one adopted woman's reconstructed search for...
Urga Song Jessica Woodworth 1999, 18 min., Color URGA SONG is a lyrical cine-poem portraying democratic Mongolia from the perspective of young artists residing in the capital city of Ulaan Baatar. Poetic imagery of stark landscapes, dramatic citysca...
Viva Eu! (Long Live Me!) Tania Cypriano 1989, 18 min., Color, US/Brazil/Spain This documentary is a tribute to Wilton Braga, a visionary artist who was one of the first people to be diagnosed with AIDS in Brazil. As Braga travels to Barcelona, New York and Sao Paolo, the film ...
Wave: A True Story in Hip Hop Tony Wesley & Brian Bullock Producer: Tony Wesley & Brian Bullock 2016, 46 min., Color, US See how the legendary Tony "Mr. Wave" Wesley went from a kid in the Bronx to an international B-Boy superstar to entrepreneur and activist. This film includes never before seen archival pictures and i...
What Do You Call An Indian Woman Who's Funny? Gurinder Chadha 1994, 19 min., BW, UK What do you call an Indian woman who's funny in 20th Century Britain? A British performer? A Black comedienne? An enigma? This humorous and comedic documentary, brings the laughs and dreams of four In...
Who's Afraid of Ngugi? Manthia Diawara 2006, 83 min., Color, US/Kenya Novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist Ngugi wa Thiong'o was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. In 1977 his novel Petals of Blood was publish...
Women and Men Are Good Dancers Arlene Bowman 1994, 6 min., Color, US "Women and Men Are Good Dancers," is a translation from the Cree language of an intertribal pow wow song. Bowman was inspired to create this tape by the "nizhoni" (Dine) or "it is beautiful" of the Pl...
The World Saxophone Quartet Barbara McCullough 1980, 5 min., Color, US A glance at an innovative quartet of jazz saxophonists, Hamiet Bluiet, Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill, and David Murray, both in concert and conversation....
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 ...
Yari Yari: Black Women Writers and the Future Jayne Cortez 1999, 52 min., Color, US Yari Yari -- Black Women Writers and the Future: An International Conference on Literature by Women of African Descent was held at New York University in October 1997. Yari Yari means "the future" in...
The Yellow Pages Ho Tam 1995, 8 min., Color, US Arranged from A to Z in 26 segments, The Yellow Pages looks at the relationship between imagery and text in the context of the Asian experience within North America and beyond. In a playful and satiri...
Yippie Yippie 1968, 10 min., BW, US Filmed as the official statement of the Youth International Party, this film is as freewheeling and irreverent as the Yippies themselves. It presents an overview of 1968 Chicago, Mayor Daley, and the...
Young Puppeteers of Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam Producer: Democratic Peoples' Republic of Viet Nam 1969, 25 min., BW, Vietnam Art, dance, music and poetry became a vital necessity for the liberated areas of South Vietnam in their daily efforts to survive the bombings and napalming of the Vietnam War. In this moving film, tee...
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