Black Lives

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Black Lives
  • God 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 ...

  • Directed 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...

  • James 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...

  • Young Soul Rebels

    Movie

    Directed by Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
    Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie Okonedo

    From 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...

  • The 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...

  • Nothing but a Man
    Movie + 3 extras

    Nothing but a Man

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Michael Roemer • 1964 • United States
    Starring Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Julius Harris

    Michael 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...

  • Mambar Pierrette

    Movie

    Directed by Rosine Mbakam • 2011 • Belgium, Cameroon
    Starring Pierrette Aboheu, Karelle Kenmogne, Cécile Tchana

    Over the past decade, Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam has distinguished herself with her incisive observational documentary portraits of African women. With MAMBAR PIERRETTE, her f...

  • Come Back, Africa

    Movie

    Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
    Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria Makeba

    One 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 ...

  • Directed 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...

  • 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...

  • Our Father, the Devil

    Movie

    Directed by Ellie Foumbi • 2021 • United States
    Starring Babetida Sadjo, Souleymane Sy Savane, Jennifer Tchiakpe

    Ellie 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. ...

  • To Be Free

    Movie

    Directed by Adepero Oduye • 2017 • United States
    Starring Adepero Oduye

    In 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.

  • Maestro

    Movie

    Directed by Josell Ramos • 2003 • United States
    Starring Larry Levan, David Mancuso, Frankie Knuckles

    The origins of New York City’s legendary underground dance-club culture are explored in this kinetic cult documentary—a vivid chronicle of a scene that became an oasis for the city’s queer and B...

  • Farewell Amor
    Movie + 6 extras

    Farewell Amor

    Movie + 6 extras

    Directed by Ekwa Msangi • 2020 • United States
    Starring Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, Zainab Jah, Jayme Lawson

    In 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...

  • Keeping 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...

  • Directed 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...

  • Drylongso
    Movie + 8 extras

    Drylongso

    Movie + 8 extras

    Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
    Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

    A 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...

  • Civic

    Movie

    Directed by Dwayne LeBlanc • 2022 • United States
    Starring Barrington Darius

    This 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...

  • The Watermelon Woman
    Movie + 11 extras

    The Watermelon Woman

    Movie + 11 extras

    Directed by Cheryl Dunye • 1996 • United States
    Starring Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker

    The 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...

  • Tori and Lokita
    Movie + 2 extras

    Tori and Lokita

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne • 2022 • France
    Starring Pablo Schils, Joely Mbundu, Alban Ukaj

    From 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...

  • Cette maison
    Movie + 1 extra

    Cette maison

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Miryam Charles • Canada • 2022
    Starring Schelby Jean-Baptiste, Florence Blain Mbaye, Marie Yardly Kavanagh

    Shot 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 ...

  • Short 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,...

  • ear for eye

    Movie

    Directed by debbie tucker green • 2021 • United Kingdom
    Starring Lashana Lynch, Tosin Cole, Danny Sapani

    With this riveting adaptation of her acclaimed play, debbie tucker green pushes the boundaries of stage and screen alike. Dynamic, absorbing, and visually inventive, EAR FOR EYE traces racial...

  • Masquerade

    Movie

    Directed by Olive Nwosu • United Kingdom, Nigeria • 2021
    Starring Teniola Aladese, Sheila Chukwulozie, Loveth Onyemaobi

    Salewa (Sheila Chukwulozie), a young queer woman living with her wife in London, returns to her hometown in Nigeria for her mother’s funeral. There, she confronts her complex f...