Film Subjects

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Civil Rights Movement

...and Justice For Whom?
Faith Pennick
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 11 min., Color, US
Taking up themes of freedom, privacy and policy after the attacks on September 11th, this video looks at how legislation ostensibly geared towards domestic security will affect various communities in ...

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...

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 17, 1995, Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist and former Black Panther Party Member was scheduled to be executed. His case--he is one of 3,000 death row inmates in the US--has raised international a...

Black and Blue
Hugh King & Lamar Williams
1987, 58 min., Color, US
A powerful mix of archival material, news clips and documentary footage chronicles impassioned community response to decades of deadly force against people of color by members of the Philadelphia poli...

Black Panther a.k.a. Off the Pig (Newsreel #19)
San Francisco 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 Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton as well as an interview with Minister of Information ...

The Chinatown Files
Amy Chen
2001, 57 min., Color, US
This documentary brings to the public, for the first time, a story that was classified as secret by the US government for over four decades. Exploring the roots and legacy of the Cold War on the Chine...

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 historica...

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...

Community Control (Newsreel #24)
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1969, 38 min., BW, US
This film documents one of the most important struggles for education in the sixties. In 1968, under intensive community pressure from Black and Latino communities, the State of New York chose three N...

Echando Raices
J.T. Takagi
Producer: The American Friends Service Committee/Rachel Kamel/Third World Newsreel
2002, 60 min., Color, US
Made in collaboration with local community groups, this three part documentary looks at the lives and struggles of a range of immigrant and refugee communities. In the Central Valley of California, m...

Farouk Abdel Muthi: Political Prisoner
Konrad Aderer
2003, 9 min., Color, US
The late Farouk Abdel-Muhti was born in Ramallah, Palestine in 1947. His mother died when Israeli Occupation forces refused to let his family through a checkpoint to reach a hospital. He came to the U...

Finding D-QU: The Lonely Struggle of California's only Tribal College
Chris Newman
Producer: Chris Newman
2010, 26 min., Color, US
In 2005, D-Q University, California’s only tribal college, was shut down after a 35-year struggle. Since then, the school’s board of trustees, past students, and community members have tried to reopen...

Flag TV
Susie Lee
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 10 min., Color, US
Can one, or many, comprehend a tragedy without either condoning it or committing to an uncritical call for retribution? This video interrogates the shifting meaning popular symbols have in competing s...

Forbidden to Wander
Susan Youssef
2003, 35 min., Color
FORBIDDEN TO WANDER chronicles the experiences of a young Arab American woman traveling on her own in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the summer of 2002. The film is a ...

Forgotten Lessons
Nashid Fareed
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 11 min., Color, US
A dialogue between two unlikely historical interlocutors is set against a compelling collection of images that situate the horror of recent events within the context of foreign policy, popular mobiliz...

From Spikes to Spindles
Christine Choy
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1976, 46 min., Color, US
This raw, gutsy portrait of New York's Chinatown captures the early days of an emerging consciousness in the community. We see a Chinatown rarely depicted, a vibrant community whose young and old join...

Gaman...to Endure
Bob Miyamoto, Drawings by Betty Chen
1982, 6 min., Color
An animated film told through a young girl’s eyes, it combines the drawings of Betty Chen and haunting music of Nobuko Miyamoto to tell of 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in U.S. concentration...

Gideon's Army
Dawn Porter
Producer: Julie Goldman
2013, 95 min., Color, US
GIDEON’S ARMY follows the personal stories of Travis Williams, Brandy Alexander and June Hardwick, three young public defenders who are part of a small group of idealistic lawyers in the Deep South ch...

Harvest of Empire: The Untold Story of Latinos in America
Eduardo López & Peter Getzels
Producer: Wendy Thompson-Marquez
2012, 90 min., Color, US
At a time of heated and divisive debate over immigration, HARVEST OF EMPIRE examines the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we ...

Homeland Insecurity
Third World Newsreel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 6 min., Color, US
A recent string of hate crimes in the months following September 11th is set within the historical context of jingoism and nationalism in the United States....

Keeping Speech Free
Third World Newsreel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2004, 34 min., Color, US
A half-hour program on the struggle to protect the first amendment rights of protestors. With hard-hitting documentation of the protests during the Republican National Convention this past August in N...

Lest We Forget
Jason DaSilva
2003, 55 min., Color, US
Through critical lenses, this film explores a lesson that history has forgotten in a country that is alienating its citizens and violating their basic rights. During World War II it was Japanese-Amer...

Life or Liberty
Konrad Aderer
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 9 min., Color, US
The popular cries for increased security since September 11th have glossed over the potential impact that heightened surveillance and policing may have on basic civil liberties. This film highlights ...

Lockdowns Up
Ashley Hunt
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 8 min., Color, US
A frightening look at the potentials that privatized prisons see for their industry following the policy shifts after September 11th. A corporate conference call from one of the leading correctional ...

Louise Alone Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words
Louis Massiah
2002, 18 min., Color, US
A short documentary tracing the life and times of Louise Alone Thompson Patterson, a civil rights and labor activist who was dubbed ”Madame Moscow” for her role in America’s communist movement....

Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing And The Fight For Fairness
Thomas Allen Harris
2011, 15 min., Color, US
A documentary that connects the Lesbian and Gay Marriage Equality movement with the Black Civil Rights Movement. This documentary interweaves archival footage and photos with contemporary intervie...

May Day Panther a.k.a. May Day (Newsreel #29)
San Francisco Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1969, 15 min., BW, US
This film documents a rally in San Francisco sponsored by the Black Panther Party. Kathleen Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and other speakers addressed thousands of protesters demanding more rights for Africa...

Mississippi Triangle
Christine Choy, Worth Long, Allan Siegel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1984, 78 min., Color, US
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and whites live in a complex world of cotton, labor, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese com...

The Nation Erupts
Black Planet Productions
Producer: Deep Dish TV, Black Planet Productions
1992, 60 min., Color, US
Focusing on nationwide responses in the wake of the Rodney King verdict. Grassroots producers across the country reflect on the media coverage of the resulting L.A. uprising and its aftermath. Communi...

Not in My Garden
Nir Nader, et al
Producer: Video '48
2000, 50 min., Color, Palestine/Israel
In 1991, Israeli authorities attempted to evict the Arab residents of the Galilean village of Ramia, telling a district court that the land was needed in order to build homes for Jewish immigrants. Th...

Not Simply a Wedding Banquet
Mickey Chen & Ming-Hsiu Chen
1997, 50 min., Color, Taiwan
The first public gay wedding in Taiwan has stirred up considerable controversy, including a local campaign to ban this film. It tells the story of Yosheng and Gary, the first gay couple to have a publ...

Ocoee: Legacy of the Election Day Massacre
Bianca White & Sandra Krasa
2002, 26 min., Color, US
In the early 20th 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 American ...

Palante, Siempre Palante!
Iris Morales
1996, 48 min., Color, US
In the midst of the African American civil rights struggle, protests to end the Vietnam War and the women's movement for equality, Puerto Rican and Latino communities fought for economic and social ju...

Passing
Kym Ragusa
1995, 9 min., BW, US
The videomaker's grandmother recounts the tale of a trip she and her lover took through the segregated South of the 1950s. As her story unfolds--revealing as much in silences and gaps as it does in it...

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 by Miami po...

Radio Haiti
Moira Tierney
2002, 4 min., Color, US
New York's Haitian community take it to the bridge to protest a year of mortal policing. On April 20th 2000 10,000 Haitians and other New Yorkers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to demand an end...

Rain
Veena Cabreros-Sud
1997, 4 min., BW, US
Rain tells the bleak story of two kids, Jose and Nicky, who are spotted by a policeman while playing with a toy gun. What starts as a childish game, quickly turns into a real life horror show, as they...

Reflections
Kim Watson & Caleb Oglesby
1987, 6 min., Color, US
The voice and vision of Civil Rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. provide foundation for this short experimental video. Video image processing techniques, archival footage and original music...

Rising Up: the Alams
Konrad Aderer
Producer: Third World Newsreel Call for Change
2005, 11 min., Color, US
As part of the Homeland security measures, immigrant men from 25, mostly Muslim countries were required to enroll in a Special Registrationprogram. The result: no evidence of terror, but some 13,000 ...

State of Emergency: Inside the LAPD
Julia Meltzer & Elizabeth Canner
1993, 28 min., Color, US
An investigative documentary on police brutality, this video looks at the LA Police Department following the beating of Rodney King. Containing hard-hitting footage of police violence, the tape also ...

Up to the South (Talaeen a Junuub)
Jayce Salloum & Walid Ra'ad
1993, 60 min., Color, Canada/Lebanon
An oblique, albeit powerful experimental documentary which examines the politics and economics of South Lebanon against the backdrop of the Israeli occupation. This video focuses on the social, intell...

We, Too, Sing America: Racist Backlash in the Aftermath of September 11
Yun Jong Suh
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 12 min., Color, US
This short is a poignant and revealing document of the thoughts, hopes and fears of Muslim, Arab-American and South Asian children in the milieu of a country calling for war and unconditional complian...

Wilmington (Newsreel #30)
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1970, 15 min., BW, US
This documentary is about a "company town." The DuPont family controls the state of Delaware as if it were a private kingdom through the giant DuPont Corporation. Their normal image as benevolent, p...

X 1/2: The Legacy of Malcolm X
Black Planet Productions
Producer: Black Planet Productions
1994, 45 min., Color, US
Set within the context of current African American struggles, this video examines the historical and contemporary legacies of Malcolm X. Using mixed media and experimental audio, X & 1/2 explores Blac...


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