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Celebrating Black Stories

Celebrating Black Stories

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Celebrating Black Stories
  • Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

    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...

  • Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking

    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...

  • Body and Soul

    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...

  • Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts

    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 ...

  • Ganja & Hess

    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...

  • Test Pattern

    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...

  • Native Son

    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 ...

  • Jazz on a Summer's Day

    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...

  • Tey

    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...

  • The Wound

    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...

  • Banel & Adama

    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 ...

  • Trouble the Water

    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 ...

  • Slam

    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...

  • The Retrieval

    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...

  • Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

    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...

  • Lost in the Stars

    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...

  • King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis

    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...

  • Downtown 81

    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...

  • Murder in Harlem

    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...

  • Neptune Frost

    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...

  • When the Beat Drops

    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...

  • Makala

    Directed by Emmanuel Gras • Documentary • 2018 • France • Swahili with English subtitles
    Featuring Kabwita Kasongo, Lydie Kasongo

    Winner of the 2017 Grand Prize and Golden Eye Special Mention for Best Documentary at International Critics Week in Cannes, "Makala" is Emmanuel Gras' powerful testa...