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 stereotypes about women of color who earn their living as domestic workers, this seemingly simple documentary achieves a quiet revolution: the expressive portrait of a fully realized individual.
Preserved by the Academy Film Archive
Up Next in Celebrate Black History
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Suzanne, Suzanne
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...
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To Be Free
Directed by Adepero Oduye • 2017 • United States
Starring Adepero OduyeIn 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.
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America
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...
