Black Lives

Black Lives

20 Episodes

Black Lives Matter, and art has a role to play in centering and celebrating the experiences of black people. These films focus on the dreams, struggles, desires, and art of black characters and real-life subjects. From rediscovered gems by mavericks of early African American cinema like Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, to independent-film landmarks by Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, to documentary portraits of black artists by white filmmakers Les Blank and Shirley Clarke, to innovative contemporary work by Khalik Allah, these films offer an invitation to reflect on the resilience and creativity of black individuals and communities in the United States and beyond.

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Black Lives
  • Black Girl

    Episode 1

    Directed by Ousmane Sembène • 1966 • Senegal
    Starring M’Bissine Thérèse Diop

    Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet his name still deserves to be better known in ...

  • Portrait of Jason

    Episode 2

    Directed by Shirley Clarke • 1967 • United States
    Starring Jason Holliday

    On the night of December 2, 1966, Shirley Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. For twelve straight hours, they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang,...

  • Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One

    Episode 3

    Directed by William Greaves • 1968 • United States
    Starring William Greaves, Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows

    In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM TAKE ONE, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them t...

  • Several Friends

    Episode 4

    Directed by Charles Burnett • 1969 • United States

    Charles Burnett’s first film already displays the director’s neorealist, poetry-of-the-everyday style as it follows a group of friends over the course of an aimless day in Los Angeles.

  • Black Panthers

    Episode 5

    Directed by Agnès Varda • 1970 • United States

    Agnès Varda turns her camera on an Oakland demonstration against the imprisonment of activist and Black Panthers cofounder Huey P. Newton. In addition to evincing Varda’s fascination with her adopted surroundings and her empathy, this perceptive sho...

  • A Well Spent Life

    Episode 6

    Directed by Les Blank • 1971 • United States

    A deeply moving tribute to the Texas songster, Mance Lipscomb, considered by many to be the greatest guitarist of all time.

  • Dry Wood

    Episode 7

    Directed by Les Blank • 1973 • United States

    A portrait of black Creole life in the Louisiana Delta.

  • The Horse

    Episode 8

    Directed by Charles Burnett • 1973 • United States

    A young boy keeps a horse company during its last moments of life in Charles Burnett’s spare, lyrical student film, which poignantly contrasts the callousness of adults with the empathy of children.

  • Babylon

    Episode 9

    Directed by Franco Rosso • 1980 • United Kingdom, Italy
    Starring Brinsley Forde, David N. Haynes, Trevor Laird

    A long-lost reggae classic reemerges. Suppressed following its Cannes premiere for fear that it would stoke racial tension, Franco Rosso’s incendiary portrait of sound-system culture in...

  • Losing Ground

    Episode 10

    Directed by Kathleen Collins • 1982 • United States
    Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones

    One of the first feature films directed by an African American woman, Kathleen Collins’s LOSING GROUND tells the story of a marriage between two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives...

  • Suzanne, Suzanne

    Episode 11

    Directed by Camille Billops and James Hatch • 1982 • United States

    One of the many films that Camille Billops and James Hatch made centering on Billops’s family, SUZANNE, SUZANNE presents a devastating portrait of the artist’s niece, haunted by the abuse she suffered as a child and the passivity...

  • My Brother's Wedding

    Episode 12

    Directed by Charles Burnett • 1983 • United States
    Starring Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett

    Recut and restored twenty-five years after its ill-fated premiere, Charles Burnett’s second feature is an eye-opening revelation—wise, funny, heartbreaking, and timeless. Pierce Mundy w...

  • Bless Their Little Hearts

    Episode 13

    Directed by Billy Woodberry • 1984 • United States
    Starring Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore, Angela Burnett

    Scripted and shot by Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry’s slice-of-life revelation is a key masterpiece of the LA Rebellion, the black independent-cinema renaissance that emerged from UCLA’s film...

  • Daughters of the Dust

    Episode 14

    Directed by Julie Dash • 1991 • United States
    Starring Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers, Barbara O. Jones

    Julie Dash’s rapturous vision of black womanhood and vanishing ways of life in the turn-of-the-century South was the first film directed by an African American woman to receive a wide release. In 1...

  • When it Rains

    Episode 15

    Directed by Charles Burnett • 1995 • United States

    Charles Burnett paints a jazz- and poetry-inflected portrait of African American community and resilience via the story of a mother who enlists a musician’s help when she is evicted on New Year’s Day.

  • The Watermelon Woman

    Episode 16

    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...

  • The Final Insult

    Episode 17

    Directed by Charles Burnett • 1997 • United States

    Charles Burnett cannily blends documentary and dramatic action with this searing, savagely ironic tale of a bank employee reduced to living out of his car, in a character study that doubles as a compassionate portrait of Los Angeles’s homeless c...

  • Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take 2 1/2

    Episode 18

  • Quiet as Kept

    Episode 19

    Directed by Charles Burnett • 2007 • United States

    A squabble reveals the anxieties and generational differences within a New Orleans family displaced by Hurricane Katrina in this alternately comedic and casually profound video work.

  • A Walk with Charles Burnett

    Episode 20

    Charles Burnett is an unsung master of American cinema who led the way for black independent filmmakers to tell their stories on-screen with poetic-realist revelations like KILLER OF SHEEP and TO SLEEP WITH ANGER. In this original documentary, Burnett joins another trailblazing African American d...