Black Lives
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1 seasonCelebrate Black History
1 season
The story of Black Americans is, in many ways, the story of America itself. Though the African American experience has long been relegated to the margins of the big screen, a vital cinematic legacy endures thanks to the work of pioneers like Fronza Woods (FANNIE’S FILM), Kathleen Collins (LOSING ...
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1 seasonDirected by Billy Woodberry
1 season
One of the leading figures of the LA Rebellion—the new wave of Black American independent cinema that emerged from UCLA’s film school in the 1970s and ’80s—Billy Woodberry created one of the movement’s defining works with his neorealist masterpiece BLESS THEIR LITTLE HEARTS, an aching portrait of...
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1 season100 Years of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra
1 season
Overlooked for too long, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1925–1987) should be seen as one of the most important and influential figures in the development of African cinema. Born in Benin and later based in Senegal, Vieyra was one of the first Black Africans to direct a film, AFRICA ON THE SEINE, a movin...
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MovieGod is Good
Movie
Directed by C Prinz • 2024 • United States
Through an ecstatic fusion of monologue, music, and dance, this at once lusciously stylized and emotionally raw collaboration between actor-musician Jeremy Pope and filmmaker C Prinz explores and expands notions of Black masculinity as it confronts the ...
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1 seasonDirected by Julius-Amédée Laou
1 season
Simmering with outrage and biting irony, the slashingly subversive films of French-Martinican writer-director Julius-Amédée Laou carry on the legacy of his compatriot Frantz Fanon, giving blistering expression to the experience of postcolonial systemic racism in France. Though he is most famous a...
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1 seasonJames Baldwin On-Screen
1 season
Towering literary lion, fierce social critic, and inimitable cultural icon James Baldwin opened up a new space for the frank discussion of race, sexuality, and identity in American society. He also left behind a dynamic cinematic legacy, as seen in these portraits that capture his electrifying pr...
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MovieYoung Soul Rebels
Movie
Directed by Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie OkonedoFrom the moment Parliament’s “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” erupts over the opening of Isaac Julien’s breakthrough feature, we know we’re in for a wild ride. The changes keep coming as a murd...
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1 seasonThe Magic of Milford Graves
1 season
A rhythm-shattering avant-jazz percussionist and a sui generis martial artist, sculptor, herbalist, and all-around cosmic Renaissance man, the late free-jazz shaman Milford Graves lived a life as liberated and unclassifiable as his music. Including the appropriately kaleidoscopic feature document...
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Movie + 3 extrasNothing but a Man
Movie + 3 extras
Directed by Michael Roemer • 1964 • United States
Starring Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Julius HarrisMichael Roemer’s groundbreaking first feature, sensitively shot by his close collaborator Robert M. Young, is a still-resonant expression of humanity in the face of virulent prejudice. Made at the...
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MovieMambar Pierrette
Movie
Directed by Rosine Mbakam • 2023 • Belgium, Cameroon
Starring Pierrette Aboheu, Karelle Kenmogne, Cécile TchanaOver the past decade, Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam has distinguished herself with her incisive observational documentary portraits of African women. With MAMBAR PIERRETTE, her f...
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MovieCome Back, Africa
Movie
Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria MakebaOne of the bravest and most powerful political films ever made, Lionel Rogosin’s urgent indictment of racial injustice—filmed in secret in 1950s Johannesburg, South Africa—follows a young Zulu ...
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1 seasonDirected by Rosine Mbakam
1 season
Working across both documentary and narrative, Cameroonian auteur Rosine Mbakam makes intimate, exquisitely observed portraits of West African women both at home and abroad that illuminate their inner lives with quiet force. In her early shorts DOORS OF THE PAST and YOU WILL BE MY ALLY and in her...
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Revolutionary Reveries: Four Films by the Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1 season
Founded by Martina Attille, Maureen Blackwood, Robert Crusz, Isaac Julien and Nadine Marsh-Edwards in London in 1983, the Sankofa Film and Video Collective sought to give expression to the complexities of Black British identity in an era of turbulent social and racial strife. Encompassing documen...
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MovieOur Father, the Devil
Movie
Directed by Ellie Foumbi • 2021 • United States
Starring Babetida Sadjo, Souleymane Sy Savane, Jennifer TchiakpeEllie Foumbi’s elegant moral thriller is a grippingly intense exploration of trauma, revenge, and forgiveness that stands as one of the most exciting feature debuts in recent memory. ...
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MovieTo Be Free
Movie
Directed by Adepero Oduye • 2017 • United States
Starring Adepero OduyeIn this soul-stirring short featuring stunning cinematography from Bradford Young, PARIAH actor Adepero Oduye takes the stage as the great Nina Simone for an intimate, defiant performance.
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Movie + 6 extrasFarewell Amor
Movie + 6 extras
Directed by Ekwa Msangi • 2020 • United States
Starring Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, Jayme LawsonIn her luminous feature debut, filmmaker Ekwa Msangi chronicles a broken family’s journey to wholeness with empathy and insight. Seventeen years after his family was separated by the civil wa...
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MovieKeeping Time
Movie
Directed by Darol Olu Kae • 2023 • United States
The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (The Ark) has been a legend in Los Angeles’s avant-garde jazz community for over sixty years. But since the death of its founder, pianist and composer Horace Tapscott, the band has spent the last three decades ebbi...
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1 seasonDirected by Morgan Quaintance
1 season
Wormholes to more wormholes, the continually surprising audiovisual essays of Morgan Quaintance draw incisive connections between the most seemingly disparate of subjects—see how his quietly radical MISSING TIME moves, almost imperceptibly, from a consideration of New Hampshire alien abductions a...
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Movie + 8 extrasDrylongso
Movie + 8 extras
Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will PowerA rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...
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MovieCivic
Movie
Directed by Dwayne LeBlanc • 2022 • United States
Starring Barrington DariusThis graceful, deeply atmospheric short follows Booker (Barrington Darius) as he returns to South Central LA after several years away. Confined to the interior of his car, we watch as he interacts with the people and pl...
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Movie + 11 extrasThe Watermelon Woman
Movie + 11 extras
Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie WalkerThe wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye s...
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Movie + 2 extrasTori and Lokita
Movie + 2 extras
Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne • 2022 • France
Starring Pablo Schils, Joely Mbundu, Alban UkajFrom two-time Palme d’Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT) comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori (in remarkable debut perform...
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Movie + 1 extraCette maison
Movie + 1 extra
Directed by Miryam Charles • Canada • 2022
Starring Schelby Jean-Baptiste, Florence Blain Mbaye, Marie Yardly KavanaghShot on dreamy 16 mm, the stunning debut feature from Haitian-Canadian filmmaker Miryam Charles resurrects a tragedy that occurred within her own family—the unresolved death of ...
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1 seasonShort Films by Fanta Régina Nacro
1 season
The first woman from Burkina Faso to direct a narrative film, Fanta Régina Nacro addresses complex social issues with a gently subversive, lightly comic touch. Tackling everything from AIDS and sexual health to gender roles and relations to the evolving place of tradition within the modern world,...
