Directed by Madeline Anderson • 1970 • United States

Trailblazing documentarian Madeline Anderson brings viewers to the front lines of the fight for civil rights. In 1969, Black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina, went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only ...

Directed by Alile Sharon Larkin • 1982 • United States

In this poetic, groundbreaking work from LA Rebellion trailblazer Alile Sharon Larkin, Alana (Margot Saxton-Federella), a Black art student, sets out to reclaim her body image and self-worth from Western, patriarchal beauty standards and, in...

Directed by Jessie Maple • 1981 • United States
Starring Obaka Adedunyo, Loretta Devine, Robert Dean

In 1981, Jessie Maple became one of the first African American women to direct an independent film with this raw, unflinching portrait of heroin addiction and recovery. Shot on location in Harlem...

Directed by Madeline Anderson • 1960 • United States

Recognized as the first documentary ever directed by an African American woman, INTEGRATION REPORT 1 examines the struggle for Black equality in Alabama, Brooklyn, and Washington, DC, incorporating footage by documentary legends Albert Maysles...

Directed by Horace Jenkins • 1982 • United States
Starring Richard Romain, Tommye Myrick, Carol Sutton

Written, produced, and directed by the late, trailblazing director Horace B. Jenkins and crafted by an entirely African American cast and crew, this luminous, recently rediscovered landmark of ...

Directed by Charles Burnett • 1977 • United States
Starring Henry Gayle Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy

A quiet revelation of American independent filmmaking, Charles Burnett’s lyrical debut feature unfolds as a mosaic of Black life in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Stan (Henr...

Directed by Zeinabu irene Davis • 1999 • United States
Starring John Earl Jelks, Michelle A. Banks, Nirvana Cobb

A poignant portrait of Deaf African Americans and the complexities of love at both ends of the twentieth century, Zeinabu irene Davis’s film is a groundbreaking story of inclusion and...

Directed by Oscar Micheaux • 1920 • United States
Starring Evelyn Preer, William Starks, Mattie Edwards

WITHIN OUR GATES is the earliest surviving feature film by an African American director. It was Oscar Micheaux’s second film (after 1919’s THE HOMESTEADER, now lost), centering on an idealisti...

Directed by Spencer Williams • 1941 • United States
Starring Cathryn Caviness, Spencer Williams, Juanita Riley

The first feature by director/actor Spencer Williams (commonly remembered today as Andy on TV’s “Amos ’n’ Andy”), THE BLOOD OF JESUS is a rural religious parable in which a woman (Cathr...

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...

Directed by Barbara Connell and Bill Jersey • 1966 • United States

With extraordinary access and unflinching frankness, this remarkable, underseen documentary offers an X-ray of the soul of a divided America working through the social shockwaves of the civil rights movement. The film chronicles ...

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...

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,...

Directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver • 1985 • United States
Starring Myles Horton, May Justice, Bernice Johnson Reagon

This galvanizing documentary tells the story of individuals who have dared to change the world for the better, and of Tennessee’s world-renowned Highlander Folk Sc...

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...

Directed by George T. Nierenberg • 1982 • United States

One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time is a joyous, funny, deeply emotional ode to gospel music and African American culture. Featuring the father of gospel, Thomas A. Dorsey; its matron, Willie Mae Ford Smith; and earth-...

Directed by Jennie Livingston • 1990 • United States
Starring Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Angie Xtravaganza

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African America...

Directed by Pratibha Parmar • 1991 • United States
Starring Angela Davis, Alice Walker, June Jordan

Featuring enlightening interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan, and Alice Walker, this essential documentary is an exuberant celebration of Black American women and their achievements. Within th...

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...

Directed by Ayoka Chenzira • 1994 • United States
Starring Kim Weston-Moran, Victoria Gabrielle Platt, Mizan Nunes

A rediscovered treasure of independent cinema, this incisive comedic drama follows Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt), a teenager coming of age in Brooklyn, as she looks to two...

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...

Directed by Horace Ové • 1968 • United Kingdom
Starring James Baldwin, Dick Gregory

In this riveting short documentary by pioneering Trinidadian-British filmmaker Horace Ové, James Baldwin and comedian-activist Dick Gregory speak to a group of radical West Indian students in London about everyth...

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...