Celebrate Black History

Celebrate Black History

19 Episodes

The story of Black Americans is, in many ways, the story of America itself. Though the African American experience has long been relegated to the margins of the big screen, a vital cinematic legacy endures thanks to the work of pioneers like Fronza Woods (FANNIE’S FILM), Kathleen Collins (LOSING GROUND), Julie Dash (DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST), and Marlon Riggs (TONGUES UNTIED), as well as bracing contemporary voices like Garrett Bradley (AMERICA) and Jon-Sesrie Goff (AFTER SHERMAN). Their stories of revolution, resistance, creativity, community, and everyday endurance offer a multifaceted vision of Black American identity across generations.

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Celebrate Black History
  • Portrait of Jason

    Episode 1

    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,...

  • Remnants of the Watts Festival

    Episode 2

    Directed by Ulysses Jenkins • 1980 • United States

    In 1972 and ’73, Ulysses Jenkins and the collective from Venice, California, known as Video Venice News documented the Watts Summer Festival—a major Black cultural event established in 1966 to commemorate the Watts Rebellion that jolted the Los ...

  • Losing Ground

    Episode 3

    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...

  • Say Amen, Somebody

    Episode 4

    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-...

  • You Got to Move

    Episode 5

    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...

  • Tongues Untied

    Episode 6

    Directed by Marlon Riggs • 1989 • United States

    Marlon Riggs’s landmark documentary uses poetry, personal testimony, rap, and performance (featuring poet Essex Hemphill and others) to describe the homophobia and racism faced by Black gay men. The stories are often devastating: the man refused en...

  • Paris Is Burning

    Episode 7

    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...

  • A Place of Rage

    Episode 8

    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...

  • Daughters of the Dust

    Episode 9

    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...

  • Alma’s Rainbow

    Episode 10

    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...

  • The Watermelon Woman

    Episode 11

    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 12

    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...

  • Baldwin’s Nigger

    Episode 13

    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...

  • Black Panthers

    Episode 14

    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...

  • Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist

    Episode 15

    Directed by Saul J. Turell • 1979 • United States

    Saul J. Turell's Academy Award-winning documentary short Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist, narrated by Sidney Poitier, traces his career through his activism and his socially charged performances of his signature song, "Ol' Man River."

  • Fannie’s Film

    Episode 16

    Directed by Fronza Woods • 1981 • United States
    Starring Fannie Drayton

    A sixty-five-year-old cleaning woman for a professional dancers’ exercise studio performs her job while telling us in voice-over about her life, hopes, goals, and feelings. A challenge to mainstream media’s prevailing stereo...

  • Suzanne, Suzanne

    Episode 17

    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...

  • To Be Free

    Episode 18

    Directed by Adepero Oduye • 2017 • United States
    Starring Adepero Oduye

    In this soul-stirring short featuring stunning cinematography from Bradford Young, PARIAH actor Adepero Oduye takes the stage as the great Nina Simone for an intimate, defiant performance.

  • America

    Episode 19

    Directed by Garrett Bradley • 2019 • United States

    Taking as its starting point the recently rediscovered Bert Williams feature LIME KILN CLUB FIELD DAY (1913)—the first known film to feature an all-Black cast—Garrett Bradley’s extraordinary new short imagines an entire lost lineage of African A...