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Art of Darkness [VHS]
52 minutes, 1991
Description: The slaves of the Caribbean contributed not only to the wealth of their masters, but also to the cultural heritage of the British Empire. For, as this film shows, such landmark institutions as the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the British Museum were all funded by money made from the slave trade.
Documented in fascinating detail through letters, paintings and poetry, the eighteenth century is shown to be both an age of high culture and an age of cruelty. The word "patron" had the dual meaning of owner of slaves and support of the arts. The film shows how the art of the period romanticized the servitude of the plantation blacks. As Hogarth's prints show, black domestics would be exquisitely attired to reflect riches of their masters. Again and again we see in works of art that the black servants were depicted as precious, exotic ornaments, even as they were brutalized in real life.
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Black Athena [VHS]
52 minutes, 1991
Description: Cornell professor Martin Bernal's iconoclastic book on the African origins of Greek civilization is still at the center of campus debates over multiculturalism, Afrocentric curricula, and "political correctness." In Black Athena, Bernal accuses classicists of racism in suppressing the numerous connections between Egyptian culture and Greek art, myth and philosophy. Leading classical scholars, on the other hand, argue that Bernal uses evidence selectively and ahistorically to supports his own Afrocentric agenda, just like the Eurocentric writers he attacks. Black Athena can help students begin to distinguish between sound scholarship and culture bias-whether inherited from the past or the present.
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Black Is …Black Ain't [VHS]
86 minutes, 1995
Description: When Marlon Riggs died of AIDS at the age of 37, he was completing this film which summoned up a lifetime of work exploring African-American identity. Variety concluded: "Riggs couldn't have left a more effective or challenging legacy to the black community."
The film weaves together the testimony of those whose complexion, class, gender, speech or sexuality has made them fell "too black" or "not black enough." Scholars and artists, including Bill T. Jones, Essex Hemphill, Angela Davis and bell hooks, as well as less well-known African-Americas, movingly recall their own struggles to discover a more inclusive definition of "blackness."
Black Is…Black Ain't is an important contribution towards building a black community based on profound empathy for the struggle for self-affirmation fought by each African-American.
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Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin [VHS]
Description: Bayard Rustin is one of the first "freedom fighters" and most controversial figures of the Civil Rights Movement. This documentary brings to light the struggles Rustin had to face playing a background role in landmark events because of one reason, his homosexuality. ALthough this hindered Rustin in many aspects, Rustin was an intelligent, gregarious, and charismatic figure for many in his era. This biography contributes a riveting new chapter to our understanding of both progressive movements and gay life in 20th century America.
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Color Adjustment [VHS]
87 minutes, 1991
Description: Marlon Riggs brings his landmark study of prejudice and perception begun in Ethnic Notions into the Television Age. From Amos 'n Andy to The Cosby Show, Color Adjustment traces over forty years of race relations in America through the lens of prime time entertainment.
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Ethnic Notions [VHS]
57 minutes, 1987
Description: Ethnic Notions is an award-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing journey through American history. It traces for the first time the evolution of several deeply rooted stereotypes that have fueled anti-black prejudice. Loyal Toms, carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, grinning Coons, savage Brutes and wide-eyed Pickaninnies roll across the screen in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, advertisements, household artifacts, even children's rhymes. These dehumanizing caricatures permeated popular culture from the 1820'a to the civil rights era and implanted themselves deep into the American psyche. Narration by Esther Rolle and commentary by respected scholars shed light on the origins and devastating consequences of this 150-year-long parade of bigotry.
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| Family Across the Sea [VHS]
56 minutes, 1991
Description: Family Across the Sea is Roots - told as an historical and linguistic detective story. It shows how scholars have uncovered the connection between the Gullah people of South Carolina and the people of Sierra Leone. Family Across the Sea demonstrates how African Americans kept their ties with their homeland through centuries of oppression in their speech, songs and customs. The return of a Gullah delegation to Sierra Leone becomes a homecoming for all African Americans. |
| Franz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask [VHS]
50 mintues, 1991
Description: It introduces students for the first time on film to one of the seminal theorists of black liberation. Fanon's fist major work, Black Skin, White Mask, helped define the concept of "black consciousness," while his enormously influential The Wretched of the Earth became " the bible of the decolonization movement." This challenging film restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary debates around post-colonial identity. Celebrated black British director Isaac Julien retraces the development of Fanon's thought through interviews with Fanon's family and friends, readings from his work and dramatizations of key moments in his life interwoven with commentary from cultural critics Stuart Hall and Francoise Verges. |
Freedom on my Mind [VHS]
110 minutes, 1994
Description: Freedom on my Mind vividly chronicles the complex and compelling history of the Mississippi voter registraction struggles, which culminated in a dramatic controntation at the Democratic Convention of 1964. The legacy of that time, the interracial nature of the campaign, the tensions and the conflicts, the achievements and failures, remain with us today.
The story is told by the participants and illustrated with rare archival footage. Authentic Mississippi delta blues and vibrant gospel songs are featured in the soundtrack.
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Furious Flower (4 Parts) [VHS]
Description: A video anthology of African American verse during the last half of the 20th century; offers intimate portraits of 26 leading poets reading and discussing their own work. Vol I , titled Elders , introduces readers to the Black poets of the 1940s who laid the groundwork for today's Black poetry renaissance. Vol II , titled Warriors , shows how the Black Arts Movement swept through the 1960s as the literary equivalent of the Black Liberation Movement of those years. Vol III , titled Seers , follows the Black Arts Movement; the poets who began publishing in the 1970s felt free to broaden the scope of African American poetry, extending their vision into new regions, exploring personal, sometimes taboo subjects. Vol IV , titled Initiates , introduces some of the poets who represent the promise and diversity of Black poetry in the 1990s. We see how the themes of the previous videos are being re-worked and expanded in preparation for the 21st century. |
| Goin' to Chicago [VHS]
71 minutes, 1994
Description: Goin' to Chicago chronicles one of the most momentus, yet least heralded sagas of American history: the great migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the cities of the North and West. Four million black people created a dynamic urban culture outside the South, changing America forever.
The film tells this history though the personal stories of a group of older Chicagoans born in the Mississippi Delta. A newspaper editor, steelworker, blues musician and others movingly recall their journey north on Highway 61 from the poverty of share-cropping to better-paying factory jobs in Chicago. On the South Side, they built a vibrant city-within-a-city of thriving black businesses, proudly referred to as "Bronzeville."
This film is a moving tribute to a generation of African-Americans who struggled- and triumphed- over odds as great as, or greater than, those faced by any other immigrant group. |
| Guimba: The Tyrant [VHS]
94 mintues, 1995
Description: Cheick Omuar Sissko has set his sumptuous epic in the legendary past to provide a biting allegory of present-day African politics. Through the story of the downfall of Guimba the tyrant, Sissko foretells a similar fate for many dictators who still pilage the continent. Sissko frames his film with the appearance of a griot, a traditional African storyteller who passes doen the "wisdom of the ancestors." Guimba similarly looks to the values and legends of the African past for inspiration and guidance in reconstructing well-governed, self-sufficient nations.
Guimba won the prize for Best Film at the 1995 Pan-African Film Festival, the highest honor in African cinema. Sissko's lavish production shoes us an Africa we haven't often seen before in films- an Africa of flourishing cities, proud courts, and gorgeously costumed nobles. (Mali in Bambara and Peul with English subtitles) |
Hughes' Dream Harlem [VHS]
Description: Langston Hughes was one of the most prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance and is often referred to as Harlem's poet laureate. This film shows how Hughes successfully fused jazz, blues, and common speech to celebrate the beauty of black life. Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Sonia Sanchez and Damon Dash testify to his continuing impact on their work and his steadfast racial pride and artistic independence. |
| Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice [VHS]
60 minutes, 1989
Description: Born into slavery in a small town in Mississippi, Ida B. Wells had a fiercely independent spirit. Shocked into action following the lynching of three of her friends, she struggled against racism, sexism and other indignities. She became a schoolteacher and journalist, writing one of the first studies on mob violence. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice follows the life of this courageous woman who became a leading national figure and also offers a unique view of the difficult era of Reconstruction. |
| James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket [VHS]
87 minutes, 1990
Description: James Baldwin (1924-1987) was at once a major twentieth-century American author, a civil rights activist and for two crucial decades, a prophetic voice calleing Americans, black and white, to confront the shared racial tragedy. James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket captures on film the passionate intellect and courageous writing of a man who was born black, impoverished, gifted and gay.
Writers Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and William Styron plae baldwin's major works (including Notes of a Native Son, Another Country and The Fire Next Time) within the context of African-American literature and the broader Civil Rights struggle. This intellectual biography will, as the Philadelphia Inquirer says, " make you want to race to the library to read Baldwin's books themselves. " |
| Lumumba: Death of a Prophet [VHS]
69 minutes, 1992
Description: Lumumba: Death of a Prophet is the first documentary on one of the legendary figures of modern African History. Haitian filmmaker Raoul peck (now Minister of Culture in the newly elected government) traces the tragic course of Lumumba's meteoric twelve month rise and fall as the first leader of an independent Zaire. Peck provides a moving memorial to a man described as a giant, a prophet, a devil, a "mystic of freedom," and the "Elvis Presley of African politics." Rather than presenting a straight- forward biography, Peck explores how the media and official record have distorted Lumumba's prophetic vision, a vision of real independence, which continues to inspire Africans. (Togo in French with English subtitles). |
| Many Steps [VHS]
Description: This informative and energetic documentary explores the origin and evolution of African American collegiate stepping dating back to the early 20th century when Black veterans of World War I enrolled in colleges. Inspired by their military training they brought that aspect into their dances, which mixed drill-like components and combined it with elements from other Black dances. |
| A Place of Rage [VHS]
52 minutes, 1991
Description: This exuberant celebration of African American women and their achievements, features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power and feminist movements, the trio reassessess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. Angela Davis, at one time the FBI's most wanted woman, recounts her involvement with the Black Panthers and the communist party. Her rarely seen 1970 prison interview, civil rights footage and archival photos are interwoven with June Jordan's powerful poetry, linking issues of homophobia, racism, U.S. imperialism and liberation struggles worldwide. The insights of acclaimed writer Alice Walker (The Color Purple) and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha enrich this engrossing portrait of Black feminism. A stirring chapter in African American history, highlighted by music from Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple Singers. |
| A Question of Color [VHS]
58 minutes, 1992
Description: A Question of Color is the first documentary to confront "color consciousness" in the black community. This film explores the devastating effect of a caste system, based on how closely skin color, hair texture and facial features conform to a European ideal. It provides a unique window for examining cross-cultural issues of identity and self-image for anyone who has experienced prejudice.
Director Kathe Sandler asked scores of African-Americans of all shades about their experience with the "color question" - from New York City to Alabama, from teenagers to a 96- year-old great-grandmother. Viewers experience the psychological and emotional turmoil that the issue engenders in a college president, a mayor, a television anchor- woman, young rappers and others, including the filmmaker herself.
A Question of Color is particularly sensitive to the special burden of color consciousness imposes on women. Darker skinned women recall how they have feel devalued and desexualized because of the bias in favor of European standards of beauty. Light skinned women reveal the pain of exclusion and ridicule because of their presumed sense of superiority.
Evocative footage recalls how the "Black is Beautiful" movement of the 1960's attempted to place a positive value on African physical and cultural characteristics. But comments by young people indicate that the color problem lingers. |
| Ralph Ellison: An American Journey [VHS]
87 minutes, 2001
Description: This is the first documentary on one of the most gifted and intellectually provocative authors of modern American literature. It establishes Ellison as a central figure in contemporary debates over art, politics, race and nationhood. An American Journey explores the many ways one of our most important writers and thinkers grappled with the question: " What does it mean to be an American?" |
| Resurgence: The Movement for Equality vs. the Ku Klux Klan [VHS]
54 minutes, 1981
Description: This documentary compares two sides of a political battle in the US: efforts of union and civil rights activists to achieve social and economic justice and an upsurge in the activity of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party. Focusing on a bitter two-year strike led by black female workers against a food processing plant, the film examines how racism functions within the context of increased industrialization in the South. |
| Richard Wright- Black Boy [VHS]
86 minutes, 1994
Description: This is the first film on the life and legacy of Richard Wright. His earliest major works, the novel Native Son, and his autobiography, Black Boy, became runaway bestsellers. They were the first works by an African America writer to confront a braod reading public witht the pain and anger of the black experience. According to critic Irving Howe, "The day Native Son appeared American culture was changed forever."
Richard Wright-Black Boy traces Wright's development as an author back to his brutal childhood in Jim Cros Mississippi, when his father deserted his family, his uncle was lynched and Wright often went hungry. It follows his involvement in many of the most important social events of his time: the Chicago black cultural renaissance of the '30s, the Communist party during the Depression, the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era, the Pan-African Liberation movement of the '50s. Richard Wright- Black Boy will inspire any reader to rediscover Wright's work with renewed insight and enthusiasm. |
| Simple Justice [VHS]
150 minutes, 1993
Description: This drama, based closely on Richard Kluger's book of the same name, recounts the remarkable legal strategy and social struggle that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Court's decision not only struck down segregated schools on the basis of race, but announced finally that America had begun to face the consequences of its most dehumanizing social practice. |
| A Son of Africa: The Slave Narrative of Oloudah Equiano [VHS]
28 minutes, 1996
Description: The Interesting Narration of the Life of Oloudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African was the first influential slave autobiography. It caused a sensation when published in 1789, fueling a growing anti-slavery movement in the United States and England. This BBC production employs dramatic reconstruction, archival material and interviews with scholars such as Stuart Hall and Ian Duffield to provide the social and economic context of the 18th-century slave trade. |
| Trouble Behind [VHS]
56 minutes, 1990
Description: Trouble Behind forces viewers to confront the roots and persistence of racism. Part 1 of the film searches for the origins of present-day racism by examining the history of a seemingly typical American small town, Corbin, Kentucky, home of Colonel Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken. During World War 1, when many black sharecroppers migrated to the cities for better paying jobs, two hundred came to Corbin to work the railroad. After the war, when the whites returned, economic competition heated up. One night in 1919, an armed mob locked black workers into boxcars, beat them, and then "railroaded" them out of town. News photos, newsreel clips, interviews with eyewitnesses and scholars, and scenes from The Birth of a Nation reconstruct events in Corbin within the socioeconomic context of the time.
Part two of the film explores white denial of the history of racism in America and the retention of prejudice in more subtle forms. When Corbin's current white residents are asked about the above-mentioned incident and the town's subsequent "whites only" reputation, many hide behind a web of evasion and denial and claim that they are not racist, just a close-knit and loyal community. They declare that the black people were run out of town because they were "loud and raucous" and "drank and gambled." An elderly woman asserts that she and her neighbors don't dislike all black people, just those who "act high and mighty," while the bravado of a group of drunken high school students reveals uncensored words of hate. City fathers proclaim that " while the Chamber of Commerce president, concerned about Corbin's image, echoes this sentiment, nervously decrying that the filmmakers are "digging up old dirt [that is] better forgotten." Meanwhile, black residents of neighboring towns express their fear of Corbin after sundown.
Beautifully shot and imaginatively edited, Trouble Behind uses oral history to illustrate the role memory plays in both preserving and repressing the past. |
| W.E.B Dubois: A Biography in Four Voices [VHS]
116 minutes, 1995
Description: This is the first film biography of a man who towered over African-American history for nearly a century: W.E.B Dubois (1868-1963), His remarkable career as a scholar-activist stretched from the end of Reconstruction to the imposition of Jim Crow, its eventual defeat by the Civil Rights movement, and the successful independence struggles of African nations. In this film, four prominent African-American writers-Wesley Brown, Thulani Davis, Toni Cade Bambara and Amiri Baraka-each narrate a period of his life and describe his impact upon their work. They chronicle Dubois's role as a founder of the N.A.A.C.P., organizer of the first Pan-African Congress; editor of the Crisis, a leading journal of the black cultural renaissance; and author of a string of landmark sociological studies including The Souls of Black Folk. Anathematized during the McCarthy years, Dubois was invited in 1961 to help in the reconstruction of Ghana, the first independent African state. He went into exile living in Accra, Ghana, until his death two years later.
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