Directed by Johan Grimonprez • Documentary • 2024 • Belgium, France, Netherlands • English, French, Dutch, Russian with English subtitles
Featuring Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie

This 2025 Oscar® nominee for Best Documentary Feature and Sundance award winner tells the story of t...

Directed by Francesco Zippel • Documentary • 2021 • US, France • English
Featuring Chuck D, John Singleton, Morgan Freeman

Oscar Micheaux was the most influential African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century, a self-taught artist who funded, produced, and released more than 4...

Directed by Oscar Micheaux • Drama • 1925 • US • Silent with English intertitles
Starring Paul Robeson, Marshall Rodgers, Lawrence Chenault

This bold and controversial film by pioneer independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux follows the path of an escaped convict who poses as a pastor in a small s...

Directed by Jeffrey Wolf • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
Featuring Russell G. Jones, Sharon Washington, Jason Samuels Smith

This illuminating documentary tells the incredible story of Bill Traylor, a former slave who turned to drawing at age 85, creating colorful, strikingly modernist work ...

Directed by Bill Gunn • Horror • 1973 • US • English
Starring Duane Jones, Marlene Clark, Bill Gunn

Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American ide...

Directed by Shatara Michelle Ford • Drama • 2020 • US • English
Starring Brittany S. Hall, Will Brill, Gail Bean

Part psychological horror, part realist drama, this exhilarating debut feature from Shatara Michelle Ford follows an interracial couple whose relationship is put to the test after a B...

Directed by Pierre Chenal • Drama • 1951 • Argentina • English
Starring Richard Wright, Jean Wallace, Gloria Madison

A new restoration of the 1951 film version of Richard Wright's novel, "Native Son" exposes the injustices of urban African-American life through the eyes of Bigger Thomas, played ...

Directed by Bert Stern • Documentary • 1959 • US • English
Featuring Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Anita O'Day

Filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and directed by renowned photographer Bert Stern, this film features intimate performances by an all-star line-up of musical legends includin...

Directed by Alain Gomis • Drama • 2012 • France, Senegal • French, Wolof with English subtitles
Starring Saul Williams, Djolof Mbengu, Anisia Uzeyman

In a village outside Dakar, the gods - or the stars, or destiny, have spoken: Satché must die by the end of the day. Directed by Alain Gomis and s...

Directed by John Trengove • Drama • 2017 • South Africa, Germany, Netherlands, France • Xhosa with English subtitles
Starring Mallory Wanecque, Timéo Mahaut, Johan Heldenbergh

Shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, "The Wound" is an exploration of tradition and sexuali...

Directed by Ramata-Toulaye Sy • Drama • 2024 • Senegal, France, Mali, Qatar • Pulaar with English subtitles
Starring Khady Mane, Mamadou Diallo, Binta Racine Sy

Banel and Adama are fiercely in love. For them, nothing else exists except each other. But duty dictates that Adama accept the role of ...

Directed by Sara Fishko • Documentary • 2016 • US • English
Featuring Sam Stephenson, Carla Bley, Steve Reich

In 1950s Manhattan, a dingy loft building becomes the home and obsession of the brilliant photographer W. Eugene Smith – who leaves his family and moves there to live the artist’s life. ...

Directed by Carl Deal, Tia Lessin • Documentary • 2008 • US • English
Featuring Brian Nobles, Wink Rivers, Kimberly Rivers Roberts

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this powerful documentary is at once horrifying and exhilarating. “Trouble the Water” takes you inside ...

Directed by Marc Levin • Drama • 1988 • US • English
Starring Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn, Bonz Malone

Winner of a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and a Caméra d'Or for Best First Feature at Cannes, "Slam" stars Saul Williams as a young Black performance poet who is imprisoned for a petty marijuana c...

Directed by Chris Eska • Drama • 2014 • US • English
Starring Ashton Sanders, Keston John, Tishuan Scott

On the outskirts of the Civil War, white bounty hunters send a young boy on a mission into the north to find a fugitive freed man by earning his trust and luring him back to the south. Groun...

Directed by Matt Wolf • Documentary • 2019 • US • English
Featuring Marion Stokes, Anne Stokes Hochberg, Frank Hollman

Matt Wolf’s documentary delves into the strange life of Marion Stokes, who obsessively and privately recorded American television news twenty-four hours a day. A civil rights-e...

Directed by Daniel Mann • Theatre • 1974 • US • English
Starring Brock Peters, Melba Moore, Raymond St. Jacques

Daniel Mann ("The Rose Tattoo") transforms Alan Paton's novel of racial oppression “Cry the Beloved Country” into a tragic and beautiful film musical. Gilded by Maxwell Anderson's luci...

Directed by Sidney Lumet, Joseph L. Mankiewicz • Documentary • 1970 • US • English
Featuring Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee

Nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, this monumental film follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his rise from regional activist to worl...

Directed by Sophie Fiennes • Documentary • 2018 • UK, Ireland • English
Featuring Grace Jones, Sly Dunbar, Jean-Paul Goude, Robbie Shakespeare

Sophie Fiennes’s electrifying documentary is a journey through the public and private worlds of mega-icon Grace Jones that contrasts musical sequences wi...

Directed by Edo Bertoglio • Arthouse • 1981 • US • English
Starring Jean Michael Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Richard Weigand

Shot in New York City in the eighties and written by Warhol associate Glenn O’Brien, "Downtown 81" features graffiti innovator and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat moving through t...

Directed by Daniel Vernon • Documentary • 2019 • UK • English
Featuring Ike White, Lana Gutman, Greg Errico

Serving a life sentence for murder, music prodigy Ike White had plenty of time to perfect his musical talent. Ike's skills were so exceptional that his story captured the media's attention...

Directed by Oscar Micheaux • Drama • 1935 • US • English
Starring Clarence Brooks, Dorothy Van Engle, Alec Lovejoy

Oscar Micheaux’s remake of his own “The Gunsaulus Mystery” (1921) is based on the true-life murder of Mary Phagan. When a young woman is found dead in a factory office, a Black empl...

Directed by Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman • Sci-Fi • 2021 • US, Rwanda • English, Kinyarwanda with English subtitles
Starring Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo, Diogene Ntarindwa

In an otherworldly e-waste dump camp, an anti-colonialist hacking collective attempts a takeover of the authoritarian regime...

Directed by Jamal Sims • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
Featuring Anthony Davis

Drop into the electric and subversive underground dance scene known as bucking. As voguing exploded out of the ballroom scene of NYC, bucking was boldly pioneered in the clubs of the Deep South as a new form of se...