Film Subjects

Select Subject and click GO

African Diaspora

‘70: Remembering a Revolution
Alex DeVerteuil & Elizabeth Topp
2011, 114 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago
How did a handful of students change the course of history in Trinidad and Tobago? Between February and April 1970, the streets of Port of Spain were filled with young Black men and women chanting ‘Po...

Afroargentines
Jorge Fortes & Diego H. Ceballos
Producer: Jorge Fortes & Diego H. Ceballos
2003, 75 min., Color/BW, Argentina
“Most Argentines, if you ask, will tell you: ‘In Argentina there are no black people.’” So opens AFROARGENTINES, a film which unearths the hidden history of black people in Argentina and their contrib...

Afro-punk
James Spooner
2003, 66 min., Color, US
AFRO-PUNK explores race identity within the punk scene. This film tackles hard questions, such as issues of loneliness, exile, inter-racial dating and black power. We follow the lives of four people w...

Against the Grain
Seyi Adebanjo & Betty Yu
2011, 6 min., Color, US
To break the mold of past documentaries about gender transformation, AGAINST THE GRAIN goes beyond the usual gender binary and linear racial focus. This short documentary follows the story of OluSeyi,...

An Intro to Cultural Skit-zo-frenia
Jamika Ajalon
1993, 10 min., Color, US
An experimental documentary exploring the lives, views of people who don't fit or who live outside the definitions regulating race ("i.e. black enough"), gender, or sexuality....

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...

Asé
Nicole Brooks
2012, 6 min., Color, Canada
Dance film that celebrates the lives of enslaved Africans. As they are released from their daily work, they gather to prepare and participate in Sunday worship in solidarity with their Ancestors and f...

Audre Lorde - The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992
Dagmar Schultz
2012, 79 min., Color, Germany
2012 marks the 20th anniversary of Audre Lorde’s passing, the acclaimed Black lesbian feminist poet and activist. Throughout the 70s and 80s, Lorde’s incisive writings and speeches defined and inspir...

Autonomy
Atkilt Geleta
2013, 26 min., Color, Nicaragua
Since the colonial period, the Atlantic Coast has been mired in conflict due to incursions by the Spanish Crown, the Nicaraguan government and the United States. Today, huge waves of mestizo migration...

AWOL
Brigid Maher
2005, 20 min., Color, US/Iraq
Keisha Johnson, an African American soldier, goes AWOL in Iraq after she flees a violent incident. On her "walkabout" journey, she encounters children who decide to help her. Keisha and the children g...

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...

Beyond the Bricks: A New Era of Education
Derek Koen
Producer: Ouida Washington
2010, 31 min., Color, US
BEYOND THE BRICKS follows African‐ American students Shaquiel Ingram and Erick Graham as they struggle to stay on track in the Newark public school system. Fifteen year‐old Shaquiel is a bright studen...

Black & White
Edgar Garcia Chavez
Producer: Edgar Garcia Chavez
2020, 5 min., Color, US
This experimental film dissects the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary’s definitions of the words "Black" and "White" – to prove how, historically, the meanings of both words have been ingrained with ver...

Black Body
Thomas Allen Harris
1992, 7 min., Color, US
Thomas Allen Harris uses text, special effects, and a single bound male nude to emphasize the humanity underlying the multiple definitions of black identity and subjectivity. The audience may be asked...

black enuf*
Carrie Hawks
2016, 23 min., Color, US
A queer oddball seeks approval from Black peers despite a serious lack of hip-hop credentials and a family that ‘talks white’. Carrie Hawks' quest for a Black Card (undeniable acceptance of my racial ...

Black Nations/Queer Nations?
Shari Frilot
Producer: Frilot and Black Nations/Queer Nations?
1995, 52 min., Color, US
This is an experimental documentary chronicling the March 1995 groundbreaking conference on lesbian and gay sexualities in the African diaspora. The conference brought together an array of dynamic sch...

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 ...

Black Russians
Kara Lynch
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 116 min., Color, US/Russia
BLACK RUSSIANS is a feature length documentary that investigates the lives of contemporary Afro-Russians aged 10 to 65, born and raised in Soviet Russia. Their experiences chronicle two ideological cu...

Blaze: The Truth Through Hip Hop
Maurice Lynch
2006, 90 min., Color, US
The Hip-Hop Christian movement has been uplifting youth by delivering positive religious messages that are not about drugs, sex, or hate but of hope and peace. In a society where artists are glorif...

Bobby Seale a.k.a. Interview with Bobby Seale (Newsreel #44)
San Francisco Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1969, 15 min., BW, US
At the time of this moving prison interview, Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale had faced a series of charges of conspiracy in connection with his involvement in the Black Liberation and Anti-wa...

Boys of Summer
Keith Aumont
Producer: Keith Aumont & Ariana Garfinkel
2010, 94 min., Color, Curaçao/US
On the tiny Caribbean island of Curaçao, Manager Vernon Isabella has sent his Little League All-Stars to the World Series for seven consecutive years, routinely defeating such baseball powerhouses as ...

Bringin' in Da Spirit
Rhonda L. Haynes
2003, 60 min., Color, US
Through the use of first person narrative and rare archival images, this documentary provides a moving glimpse of the women who have skillfully brought scores of children across the threshold of exist...

Call to Manhood
Narcel G. Reedus
1994, 57 min., BW, US
CALL TO MANHOOD is an emotional testament to the brothers who are reaching back into the community to save young black boys. This documentary traces the steps taken by the Fulton County Human Services...

Caribbean Skin, African Identity
Mandisa Pantin
2010, 33 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago
The documentary examines the concept of African identity as it has evolved over the generations in Trinidad & Tobago. In it, the director explores her own identity, using the Emancipation Day parade a...

Changing Face of Harlem
Shawn Batey
Producer: Shawn Batey & Shaun Jaffier
2014, 62 min., Color, US
Told through the personal accounts of residents, business owners, politicians and real estate developers, CHANGING FACE OF HARLEM explores the drastic transformation of this historic neighborhood over...

Chasing the Moon
Dawn Suggs
1991, 4 min., BW, US
This fascinating film presents the meditations of a Black lesbian grappling with the memory of an attack that makes her wary about being out on the street....

The Cinematic Jazz of Julie Dash
Yvonne Welbon
1992, 26 min., Color, US
This is an in-depth interview with filmmaker Julie Dash, whose first feature film, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST, has become a critical and word-of-mouth sensation since its release in the Winter of 1992. Her...

Close to Home
Rodney Evans
1998, 24 min., Color, US
CLOSE TO HOME documents the filmmaker's journey as he comes out to a conservative, Jamaican family and negotiates a painful relationship with a 21-year old heterosexual man....

Closer to the Dream (Long Version)
Guetty Felin & Hervé Cohen
2008, 102 min., Color, US
An electoral road movie 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 ...

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...

Crocodile Conspiracy
Zeinabu Irene Davis
1986, 13 min., Color, US/Cuba
This charming tale focuses on Willa Ledbetter, an African American middle-aged school teacher in Watts, and her longing to visit her parent's homeland of Cuba. In the face of unexpected political and...

Cuban Roots/Bronx Stories
Pam Sporn
2000, 57 min., Color, US/Cuba
Highlights the experience of a black Cuban American famiy, revealing that the Cuban-American experience is more diverse, racially and ideologically, than we are often led to believe. This documenta...

Deft Changes: An Improvised Experience
Alonzo Speight
1991, 10 min., Color, US
Through short improvised sketches, this video explores the generational conflicts between a father and son who are each musicians. It features performances by guitarist Mark Whittfield, and the late m...

Deported
Rachèle Magloire & Chantal Regnault
2012, 72 min., Color, Haiti
DEPORTED follows members of a unique group of men in Haiti: criminal deportees from North America. Since 1996, the United States has implemented a policy of repatriation of all foreign residents who h...

Diaspora Conversations: from Goree to Dogon
Manthia Diawara
2000, 47 min., Color, US
Actor Danny Glover and director Manthia Diawara travel through West Africa from Goree to Dogon, creating conversations that link different sides and accounts of the African diaspora. "Diaspora Convers...

Dreaming Rivers
Martina Attille
Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1988, 35 min., Color, UK
Evoking the colonial experience of Caribbean immigrants in Britain, DREAMING RIVERS presents an impressionist rendering of a middle-aged Black on the past, present and future from her death bed. Atten...

Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project
Charles B. Brack
Producer: Charles B. Brack, CoProduced with Third World Newsreel
2008, 58 min., Color, US
This documentary tells the little known story of Sakia Gunn, a 15 year old student who was fatally stabbed in a gay hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. Sakia was an Aggressive, according to GLAAD, a hom...

E Minha Cara
Thomas Allen Harris
2001, 56 min., Color, US/Brazil
A mythopoetic feast of self-discovery that crosses three continents and three generations, E MINHA CARA traces the filmmaker's journey to Salvador Da Bahia, the African heart and soul of Brazil, as he...

Ebony Goddess: Queen of Ilê Aiyê
Carolina Moraes-Liu
Producer: Carolina Moraes-Liu and Chung Liu
2010, 20 min., Color, Brazil/US
EBONY GODDESS: QUEEN OF ILÊ AIYÊ follows three women competing to be the carnival queen of Ilê Aiyê, a prominent and controversial Afro-Brazilian group with an all-black membership. The selection is b...

Edouard Glissant: One World in Relation
Manthia Diawara
2010, 50 min., Color, US
In 2009, filmmaker Manthia Diawara, along with his camera, documented his conversations with Martinican philosopher, writer, and poet Édouard Glissant aboard the Queen Mary II on their transatlantic j...

An Empty House Falls
Marta Rodríguez and Fernando Restrepo
2004, 52 min., Color, Colombia
In the violent and complex conflict that has racked Colombia, the most vulnerable are always the most affected. The URABÁ TRILOGY presents the stories of Afrocolombian peasants displaced from their la...

Encounter at the Intergalactic Café
Thomas Allen Harris
1996, 17 min., Color, US
A videotape of a live performance--a mythopoetic rendering of the original encounters between African, Indigenous and European peoples in the present day "border regions". Saint, comic, demon, deity, ...

Ezekiel's Dream
Narcel G. Reedus
1994, 15 min., BW, US
EZEKIEL'S DREAM starring Steve Coulter is a visual poem describing the last thoughts of a black man perparing for the fight of his life. This film has garnered numerous awards and has screened in Berl...

A Family Called Abrew
Maureen Blackwood
Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1992, 42 min., Color, UK
This documentary profiles a fascinating family that has been based in Scotland since the end of the 19th century. It also traces the history of people of African descent living in Europe before the gr...

Family Portrait in Black and White
Julia Ivanova
Producer: Boris Ivanov
2011, 85 min., Color, Canada/Ukraine
Olga Nenya has 27 children. Four of them, now adults, are her biological children; the other 23 are adopted or foster children. Of those 23, 16 are biracial. Some residents of Sumy, Ukraine, consider ...

Fathers, Sons & Unholy Ghosts
Danny Thompson & Glen Noble
Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1994, 13 min., Color, UK
This moving narrative is a unique exploration of the multi-layered and often underexamined relationship between fathers and sons. When Martin, a young father, is left alone one weekend with his son, h...

Favela Rising
Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary
Color, Brazil
Their music fueled a movement. His message fought a war. FAVELA RISING documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of ...

Finding Christa
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1991, 55 min., Color, US
This documentary presents a moving yet unsentimental view of motherhood and adoption. It explores the feelings surrounding the reunion of a young woman with her natural mother 20 years after being giv...

Fire Burn Babylon
Sarita Siegel
2012, 53 min., Color, UK
An inquiry into the transformations of culture and place when a spiritually vivid past meets the intransigent reality of a Western city. Rastafarians Lyndon, I-Shaka and Elroy reinvent themselves as r...

Forward Ever: The Killing of a Revolution
Bruce Paddington
Producer: Bruce Paddington & Luke Paddington
2013, 113 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago
The invasion of Grenada by US forces in 1983 echoed around the world and put an end to a unique experiment in Caribbean politics. What were the circumstances that led to this extraordinary chain of ev...

Four Women
Julie Dash
1979, 7 min., Color, US
An imaginatively choreographed dance interpretation of the ballad by Nina Simone on four common stereotypes of Black women....

Frankie & Jocie
Jocelyn Taylor
1994, 20 min., Color, US
Examining the relationships between brother and sister, hetero and queer, male and female, this video weaves a provocative discussion between a Black lesbian and her straight brother. In an eloquent e...

From Harlem to Harvard
Four Square Productions
Producer: Four Square Productions
1982, 30 min., Color, US
An excellent discussion film for college bound students, this thoughtful documentary captures the alienation, prejudice and insecurity that often confront African American students at predominantly wh...

Ganja and Hess
Bill Gunn
1970, 110 min., Color, US
This extraordinary foray into the realms of Black consciousness has acquired deserved status as a cinema classic. The vampire film genre is used to create a mythical vision of the forces that shape Dr...

Gershwin & Bess: A Dialogue with Anne Brown
Nicole Franklin
Producer: EPIPHANY Inc.
2010, 36 min., Color, US
In 2004 at her home in Oslo, Norway, soprano Anne Wiggins Brown sat down with tenor Dr. William A. Brown (no relation) of the Center Black Music Research for an on-the-record conversation about origin...

Hafu - The Mixed-Race Experience in Japan
Megumi Nishikura & Lara Pérez Takagi
2013, 85 min., Color, Japan
HAFU is the unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of mixed-race Japanese and their multicultural experience in modern day Japan. The film follows the lives of five “hafus”–the Japanese t...

Hair-tage
Shawn Batey
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
1997, 10 min., Color, US
This short documentary examines the decisions involved in growing and wearing dreadlocks in African-American communities. Through interviews and playful camerawork, Batey explores the motivations and ...

Heaven, Earth and Hell
Thomas Allen Harris
1994, 26 min., Color, US
Reflecting on the "trickster" figure in African and Native American cultures, while recounting the story of his first love, this beautiful work incorporates the critical texts of Frantz Fanon, bell ho...

Hope in My Heart: The May Ayim Story
Maria Binder
1997, 28 min., Color, Germany
A moving documentary about the life and untimely death of Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political personality May Ayim. Ayim was one of the founders of the Black German Movement, and her research...

Illusions
Julie Dash
1983, 34 min., BW, US
Set in a fictitious Hollywood studio in 1942, this elegant drama contrasts society's views of Black women with their self-perceptions. An ambitious movie executive, Mignon Dupree is perceived by her ...

I'm British But…
Gurinder Chadha
1989, 30 min., Color, UK
This unique look at Asians in Britain offers first-hand views of second generation Asians, adding archival footage and invigorating Bhangra and Bangla music--traditional Punjabi songs updated with hip...

In the Spirit of Peace
Al Santana
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 8 min., Color, US
After September 11th, religion becomes the vehicle for a community looking for commensurability in the midst of an environment that would rather seek quick answers to a larger problem....

Ina Mae Best
Charlene Gilbert
1993, 25 min., Color
A documentary portrait of a courageous African American woman, who after 18 years working at a textile factory in Goldsboro, North Carolina, became a passionate and outspoken leader in a struggle to u...

Indochina: Traces of a Mother
Idrissou Mora-Kpai
2011, 72 min., Color, France/Benin
INDOCHINA: TRACES OF A MOTHER documents a little-known chapter in African, Asian and French colonial history and the personal story of Christophe, a Beninese-Vietnamese orphan that returns to Vietnam ...

Injustice
Ken Fero
2001, 98 min., Color
The story of the struggles for justice by the families of people who have died in police custody. Between 1969 and 1999, over one thousand people died in police custody in England. Not one police offi...

Invisible Roots: Afro-Mexicans in Southern California
Tiffany Walton & Lizz Mullis
Producer: Tiffany Walton, Lizz Mullis & Richard Goldlander
2015, 21 min., Color, US
More than one million Mexicans are of African descent, yet this heritage is often forgotten, denied, and many times stigmatized, both in Mexico and in Chicanx communities in the United States. INVISIB...

Is It Sweet? Tales of an African Superstar in New York
Jesse W Shipley
Color, US
Reggie Rockstone is a celebrity rap musician in Accra, Ghana, where he inspired a young generation of musicians and continues to draw huge crowds. But when he comes to New York to play for the Ghanaia...

The KKK Boutique ain't Just Rednecks: A Docu/Fantasy about Everybody's Racism
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1994, 60 min., Color, US
Write Billops and Hatch: "Even as late as a hundred years ago, discrimination on the basis of race was considered a natural and even desirable trait for humans to possess. We Americans have tried to i...

L’Esprit Prêt-à-Partager
Jamika Ajalon
2009, 28 min., Color, Germany/Senegal
Documents an art workshop held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2008, where artists from Africa and Europe explore issues surrounding fashion, sport and diasporic art and identities. The artists collaborate with...

Land Where My Fathers Died
Daresha Kyi
1991, 24 min., Color, US
A fiercely independent young African American woman and her nouveau-nationalist photographer boyfriend decide to visit the father she hasn't seen in years. The tragicomic reunion shatters her illusion...

Landscape & Memory: Martinican Land-people-history
Renee Gosson & Eric Faden
2001, 30 min., Color, US/Martinique
In LANDSCAPE AND MEMORY, the French West Indies most renowned identity theoreticians Jean Bernabe, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphael Confiant investigate the different ways in which France, as a colonial...

A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde
Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1995, 52 min., Color, US
An epic portrait of the eloquent, award-winning Black, lesbian, poet, mother, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde, whose writings -- spanning five decades -- articulated some of the most important socia...

Little Brother: A Do Right Man (Chapter 3)
Jasmin Tiggett
Producer: Nicole Franklin, Epiphany, Inc.
2012, 17 min., Color, US
LITTLE BROTHER is a series of short documentary films dedicated to giving Black boys a unique voice. Beginning in 2010, filmmakers Nicole Franklin and Jasmin Tiggett started taking an annual look at B...

Little Brother: Manchild in the Promised Land (Chapter 5)
Nicole Franklin
Producer: Nicole Franklin & J. Tiggett
2015, 17 min., Color, US
LITTLE BROTHER: MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND is Chapter 5 of the film series that features young Black boys and their thoughts on Love. This chapter was filmed in Tucson, AZ, where the young men have...

Little Brother: The Fire Next Time (Chapter 4)
Nicole Franklin
2014, 17 min., Color, US
LITTLE BROTHER is a series of short documentary films dedicated to giving Black boys a unique voice. Beginning in 2010, filmmakers Nicole Franklin and Jasmin Tiggett started taking an annual look at B...

Little Brother: The Street (Chapter 2)
Nicole Franklin
Producer: EPIPHANY Inc.
2012, 17 min., Color, US
LITTLE BROTHER is a series of 15-minute documentary films dedicated to giving Black boys a unique voice. Beginning in 2010, filmmakers Nicole Franklin and Jasmin Tiggett started taking an annual look ...

Little Brother: Things Fall Apart (Chapter 1)
Nicole Franklin & Jasmin Tiggett
Producer: EPIPHANY Inc.
2010, 18 min., Color, US
LITTLE BROTHER is a series of 15-minute documentary films dedicated to giving Black boys a unique voice. Beginning in 2010, filmmakers Nicole Franklin and Jasmin Tiggett started taking an annual look ...

Locations of the M/othership: Black Women as Fugitive Archetype of Resistance
Jamika Ajalon
2009, 20 min., Color/BW, UK/US
A live audio/visual installation using images of subversive and legendary Black women and excerpts from sci-fi films and TV series. Ajalon explores the intersection of Black women’s representations an...

The Lower 9: A Story of Home (Long Version)
Matthew Hashiguchi
Producer: Matthew Hashiguchi & Elaine McMillion
2012, 50 min., Color, US
THE LOWER 9: A STORY OF HOME showcases six determined Lower Ninth Ward residents who share their most intimate stories of home, as they resume their lives years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged their n...

The Lower 9: A Story of Home (Short Version)
Matthew Hashiguchi
Producer: Matthew Hashiguchi & Elaine McMillion
2012, 20 min., Color, US
THE LOWER 9: A STORY OF HOME showcases four determined Lower Ninth Ward residents who share their most intimate stories of home, as they resume their lives years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged their ...

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...

Memory Tracks
Jamika Ajalon
1996, 12 min., UK
A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown follows the afroed spirit of a revolutionary past through London's streets: Brixton and Portobello. I used the camera as the means for reflexive analysis of...

Missing Relations
Yvonne Welbon
1994, 13 min., Color, US
Almost 30 years ago, the filmmaker's mother gave birth to twin daughters. For a few months, Welbon shared her childhood with her baby sisters until their father "kidnapped" them. Welbon never saw her ...

Monique
Yvonne Welbon
1990, 3 min., BW, US
Using a childhood experience of racial bigotry at school, this film looks at the ways in which racism is ingrained in American society, even in the play of children. MONIQUE is a compelling exploratio...

Mother of the River
Zeinabu Irene Davis
1995, 28 min., BW, US
This powerful drama of a young girl's slave experience in the antebellum South is based on the power of the folk tale and the riddle. Dofimae is an independent spirit despite her condition of slavery....

Mother Tongue
Patrice Mallard
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
1994, 7 min., BW, US
Inspired by the experience of her great-grandparents, Mallard uses the history of slavery and the nature of language to examine the profound effects of colonization on the psyche of a people....

Nas: Time Is Illmatic
One9 & Erik Parker
Producer: One9 & Erik Parker
2014, 74 min., Color, US
Twenty years after the release of Nas’s groundbreaking debut album ‘Illmatic,’ NAS: TIME IS ILLMATIC takes us into the heart of his creative process. Returning to his childhood home in Queensbridge, N...

Negritude: A Dialogue Between Wole Soyinka and Senghor
Manthia Diawara
2015, 59 min., Color, USA/France/Germany/Portugal
This imagined dialogue between Léopold Sédar Senghor, one of the founding fathers of Negritude, and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka was reconstructed almost entirely from archival materials. It probes the...

Never Again
Marta Rodríguez and Fernando Restrepo
2001, 56 min., Color, Colombia
In the violent and complex conflict that has racked Colombia, the most vulnerable are always the most affected. The URABÁ TRILOGY presents the stories of Afrocolombian peasants displaced from their la...

No Bois Man No Fraid
Christopher Laird
2013, 100 min., Color, Trinidad & Tobago
Two young Trinidadian internationally certified multidisciplinary martial artists re-discovered their roots in the unique Trinidadian martial art of Kalinda or stick fighting and were accepted for men...

No Time to Lose
Allan Siegel & Patricia Benoit
1988, 28 min., Color, US
Average New Yorkers describe their childhood experiences as "carefree", and "lots of fun and games". But 40% of all Black children and 50% of all Hispanic children in New York City live below the nat...

Nuyorican Básquet
Julio César Torres González & Ricardo Olivero Lora
Producer: Freddie Marrero
2017, Color, Puerto Rico
Nuyorican Básquet chronicles the dramatic story of the Puerto Rican national basketball team’s participation in the 1979 Pan American Games. Boasting a totally unique approach to the game, the Puer...

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 ...

Older Women and Love
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1987, 26 min., Color, US
Using interviews and dramatizations, this film achieves a touching and often humorous look at social attitudes towards relationships between older women and younger men. The filmmakers are involved on...

One People
Al Santana
Producer: Laura L. Fowler & Al Santana
2007, 30 min., Color, US
Is everything political? Against the backdrop of a gentrified Harlem community, the story centers on two sisters who have opposite views about social responsibility and the role of artists. Aliyah, a ...

Ori
Raquel Gerber
1989, 90 min., Color, Brazil
This documentary provides an overview of the Black Movement in Brazil during the 70s and 80s and tells the story of Beatriz Nascimento, an activist and historian searching for her African heritage. Be...

The Other Side of the Water: The Journey of a Haitian Rara Band in Brooklyn
Jeremy Robins and Magali Damas
2010, 52 min., Color/BW, US/Haiti
Part carnival, part vodou ceremony, and part grassroots protest, Haitian “Rara” is one of the most breathtaking and contested forms of music in the Americas. The Other Side of the Water follows a gro...

The Other Side of the Water: The Journey of a Haitian Rara Band in Brooklyn (72)
Jeremy Robins and Magali Damas
2010, 72 min., Color/BW, US/Haiti
Part carnival, part vodou ceremony, and part grassroots protest, Haitian “Rara” is one of the most breathtaking and contested forms of music in the Americas. The Other Side of the Water follows a grou...

Out of La Negrura/Out of Blackness in the Bronx
Jane Gabriels
2018, 24 min., Color, US
Dance artists Sita Frederick, Ana "Rokafella" Garcia, and Marion Ramirez collaborate to create a performance work that explores Caribbean and Latina-American experiences through dance. OUT OF LA NE...

Ọya: Something Happened On The Way To West Africa!
Seyi Adebanjo
2015, 30 min., Color, US/Nigeria
In this documentary, Queer Gender-Non-Conforming Nigerian media artist Seyi Adebanjo tells a tale not often heard about gender and indigenous Yorùbá spirituality. ỌYA follows Seyi's journey to Nigeria...

The Passion of Remembrance
Maureen Blackwood & Isaac Julien
Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1986, 80 min., Color, UK
This first feature film by one of Britain's most respected workshops, is a multi-layered look at issues of concern to Black youth during the turbulent 80s--the Thatcher era. Combining documentary foot...

People Say
Mary Beth Black
2005, 5 min., Color, US
This insightful video montage embodies the full range of images, sights and emotions which followed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.. Yet, it also depicts the hope, compassion and commit...

The People United
Alonzo Speight
1985, 60 min., Color, US
Boston, 1978: It was an intense period of racial conflict over school bussing and escalating incidents of police brutality in the predominantly Black section of Roxbury. In the wake of growing racial ...

Perfect Image?
Maureen Blackwood
Producer: Sankofa Film and Video Collective
1988, 30 min., Color, UK
This fast-paced examination of Black women's struggles to assert their own positive self-images features two female characters who seem to represent archetypical extremes. The film is a visual feast, ...

Praise House
Julie Dash
1991, 30 min., Color, US
This video uses stunningly beautiful and innovative techniques to tell the story of a young woman moved to dance by a powerful and creative spirit. Despite her mother's disinterest, Hannah is driven t...

PRIMETIME: Fighting Back Against Foreclosure
Jennifer Fasulo & Manauvaskar Kublall
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
2009, 23 min., Color, US
This timely film takes the viewer behind the foreclosure statistics and into the homes and hearts of two NYC women who have been pummeled by the foreclosure tsunami. It breaks down the complex issues...

Punta Soul
Nyasha Laing
2008, 39 min., Color, Belize
Punta Soul is the intergenerational story of an inspiring musical journey told through its intimate portraits of Garifuna musicians such as Andy Palacio. The Garifuna, an afro-indigenous people exiled...

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...

Red Card: Soccer and Racism (Tarjeta Roja)
Rodolfo Muñoz
2007, 93 min., Color, Ecuador
This award-winning documentary about racism in Ecuador tells the story of Afro-Ecuadorian soccer player, Agustin "El Tin" Delgado. Arguably the best soccer player in the Ecuadorian national team, Delg...

Remembering Jason
Nashid Fareed
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
2000, 24 min., Color, US
Dedicated to "those we have lost to needless violence", REMEMBERING JASON portrays the lives of those connected to him. After living what could be termed a normal life--school, sports, music--Jason Th...

Remembering Wei Yi-fang, Remembering Myself.
Yvonne Welbon
1995, 30 min., Color, us/China
An autobiographical experimental documentary about the artist's experiences as an African-American woman living in Taiwan for six years. Recreations of time and place are presented through memories, h...

Resilience
Lana Lovell
2010, 48 min., Color, Canada
An intimate, richly detailed documentary that confronts long-held stereotypes by stepping inside the lives of three real women in the real world. With honesty, intelligence and humour, Nancy, Simone a...

Reunion: West Indian Women at War
Frances-Anne Solomon
1993, 25 min., Color, UK
In 1943, 300 middle-class “colored” women from across the West Indies were recruited to the ATS, a branch of the British Army during WW2. Meeting up for a reunion with her wartime friends, 72-year-...

Rezoning Harlem: The Battle over Harlem's Future
Natasha Florentino & Tamara Gubernat
Producer: Natasha Florentino, Tamara Gubernat, Juliana Alzate and Pamela Nichols
2008, 40 min., Color, US
Since 2002, more than 100 rezonings have been signed into law in New York City, including the rezoning of 125th Street in Harlem. REZONING HARLEM follows longtime members of the Harlem community a...

Ritual Rhythms: Candombe
Mabel Maio
1999, 48 min., Color, Uruguay
This documentary explores the history and modern reality of candombe, the drum music of Uruguay's black parade bands. It is a way of life that was born in the musical gatherings of slaves in urban mar...

Saints Rising
Hailima Yates
Producer: Anonamiss Productions, LLC
2008, 45 min., Color, US
SAINTS RISING is a documentary presenting the voices of New Orleans years after Hurricane Katrina and the breech of the levees. From children to volunteers, they discuss the troubles that were left be...

Salty Dog Blues
Al Santana & Denise B Santiago
2012, 52 min., Color/BW, US
SALTY DOG BLUES features a group of men and women of color who served in the United States Merchant Marine from 1937 – 1989. This nine-year project examines their development as a multi-racial and int...

Samuel Lind's Coastal World
Sonia Fritz
Producer: Frances Lausell
2006, 24 min., Color, Puerto Rico
This documentary captures the colors, music and culture that inspire the art of Samuel Lind, an Afro-Puerto Rican painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Originally from Loiza, Puerto Rico, Lind celebra...

Seen, But Not Heard: AIDS and the Untold War Against Black Women
Cyrille Phipps
2008, 12 min., Color, US
SEEN, BUT NOT HEARD is a short documentary that will explore the historical antecedents, current trends, and emerging activism concerning HIV/AIDS and women of African descent. Through raw and reveal...

Shades
Jamika Ajalon
1994, 12 min., Color
SHADES explores the issues around dark and light skin in the African American community. Drawing on erotic imagery and the relation between a light skinned woman and a darker skinned Lesbian, this vid...

Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections On Ritual Space
Barbara McCullough
1980, 60 min., Color, US
This video investigates the use of ritual in the work of artists using different media. Here ritual is defined as the creation and utilization of objects, words or tones used in a repetitive or habitu...

Slave Routes: Resistance, Abolition and Creative Progress
Jayne Cortez
Producer: Manthia Diawara
2009, 100 min., Color, US
From the 1400s to the 1800s millions of Africans were forcefully removed from Africa and shipped across the Atlantic to the so-called "New World". In 1808, the passage of the Transantlantic Slave Trad...

Soraya, Love Is Not Forgotten
Marta Rodríguez and Fernando Restrepo
2006, 52 min., Color, Colombia
In the violent and complex conflict that has racked Colombia, the most vulnerable are always the most affected. The URABÁ TRILOGY presents the stories of Afrocolombian peasants displaced from their la...

Splash!
Thomas Allen Harris
1991, 10 min., Color, US
SPLASH is a fable-like tale of memory and emotion. Using a range of techniques, it deftly explores the interplay between identity, fantasy, gender, homosexual desire and pre-adolescence. These forces ...

Suzanne, Suzanne
Camille Billops & James Hatch
1982, 30 min., BW, US
This poignant documentary profiles a young black woman's struggle to confront the legacy of a physically abusive father and her headlong flight into drug abuse. Suzanne, after years of physical and ps...

Sweet Sugar Rage
Honor Ford-Smith & Harclyde Walcott
1985, 45 min., Color, Jamaica
A popular Jamaican women's troupe uses improvisation and theater as consciousness-raising tools for both rural and urban audiences. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women-...

Take Your Bags
Camille Billops
1998, 11 min., Color, US
"My take on slavery: When the Africans boarded the ships bound for America, they carried in their bags all their memories of home. When they arrived in the New World, their bags had been switched, and...

This is My House
Charlene Gilbert
1995, 6 min., Color, US
This experimental short humorously and powerfully explores women's body imagery. A Black woman's body is defined and re-defined in her own voice, exploring the notions of beauty, power, gender, owners...

The Throwaways
Bhawin Suchak & Ira McKinley
Producer: Bhawin Suchak & Ira McKinley, Executive Producer: Sam Pollard
2014, 62 min., Color, US
THE THROWAWAYS is a personal exploration of the devastating impact of police brutality and mass incarceration on the black community told through the eyes of formerly incarcerated activist Ira McKinle...

Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles
Seyi Adebanjo
2013, 7 min., Color, US
TRANS LIVES MATTER! JUSTICE FOR ISLAN NETTLES is a powerful and moving document of a community vigil for Islan Nettles, a Transgender Womyn of Color who was beaten to death in front of a New York Poli...

Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela
Thomas Allen Harris
Producer: Thomas Allen Harris
2005, 73 min., Color, US
In the wake of his stepfather’s death, Thomas Allen Harris embarks on a journey of reconciliation with the man who raised him as a son but whom he could never call "father." As part of the first wave ...

Vintage: Families of Value
Thomas Allen Harris
1995, 72 min., Color, US
VINTAGE is an experimental documentary which looks at three African American families through the eyes of lesbian and gay siblings--including the filmmaker and his younger brother. Three groups of que...

Voices of the Gods
Al Santana
Producer: Al Santana
1985, 60 min., Color, US
This documentary captures the rich legacy of ancient African religions practiced today in the United States. It provides viewers with rare insight into the practices and beliefs of the Akan and Yoruba...

Voodoo Dance: A Tribute to the People of Haiti
Elsie Haas
1989, 52 min., Color, Haiti
This film documents the significant role of Voodoo in Haitian culture from the perspectives of Voodoo priests, government officials, historians and politicians. Attacked by Western clerics and declare...

Voting Rights Now
Mary Beth Black
2006, 12 min., Color, US
On April 1st, 2006, seven month after Hurricane Katrina devasted the city of New Orleans and weeks before the elections for Mayor of New Orleans, thousands of New Orleans residents marched to protest ...

Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification
Barbara McCullough
1979, 4 min., BW, US
An original and visionary work, this cathartic film links the present with the ancestral past. A graceful young African American woman emerges from the ruins of a crumbling building. She disrobes, and...

Wave: A True Story in Hip Hop
Tony Wesley & Brian Bullock
Producer: Tony Wesley & Brian Bullock
2016, 46 min., Color, US
See how the legendary Tony "Mr. Wave" Wesley went from a kid in the Bronx to an international B-Boy superstar to entrepreneur and activist. This film includes never before seen archival pictures and i...

The Way North: Maghrebi Women in Marseille
Shara K. Lange
2008, 60 min., Color, France
"I thought that in France life would be easier—it’s the land of liberty. But it wasn’t like that at all." --Fatima Rhazi From Marseille come the stories of North African women making new lives for ...

Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writers Dissecting Globalization
Jayne Cortez
2007, 75 min., Color, US
Globalization, now a buzzword in the West, has been a phenomenon that has shaped the culture and politics of Africa and its diaspora for centuries. YARI YARI PAMBERI brings together women from across ...


Call Us 1 (212) 947-9277
  • Third World Newsreel
  • • 545 Eighth Avenue, Suite 550, New York, NY 10018
  • • Telephone 212-947-9277

TWN acknowledges that in New York we are on the unceded territory of the Lenni Lenape, Canarsie, Shinecock, and Munsee peoples and challenges the harm that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous and People of Color communities here and abroad, which is why we all need to be part of the struggle for rights, equality and justice.

TWN is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Color Congress, MOSAIC, New York Community Trust, Peace Development Fund, Ford Foundation, Golden Globe Foundation, Kolibri Foundation and individual donors.