Antiracist Resources

Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, Lebron Jameѕ... Nowadays, the most fashionable heroes of pop culture are black men. Their love of style is not only a status symbol or just a vapid superficial trend, it is rooted in a deep American cultural history, as flamboyant as it is political, that of Black Dandyism. This movement recalls more than a century of cultural adventures, at the crossroads of fashion, arts and major social issues.

White Americans have always stereotyped African Americans. But the rigid definitions of "Blackness" that African Americans impose on each other, Riggs claims, have also been devastating. Is there an essential Black identity? Is there a litmus test defining the real Black man and true Black woman?

This cinematic essay posits science fiction (with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering) as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness.

Weaving together sequences of hair-braiding salons in Ghana, voice-over of Oprah rhapsodizing brown-skinned dolls and animated clips of signature hairstyles, Me Broni Ba (My White Baby) is an artfully composed, thought-provoking work that investigates the fraught relationship between images of beauty and power.

An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.

Structured as an allegorical fable set between 1949 and 1970, THE NINE MUSES is comprised of nine overlapping musical chapters that mix archival material with original scenes. Together, they form a stylized, idiosyncratic retelling of the history of mass migration to post-war Britain through the suggestive lens of the Homeric epic.

An homage to the inspirational African-American civil rights leader, SEVEN SONGS FOR MALCOLM X collects testimonies, eyewitness accounts and dramatic reenactments to tell the life, legacy, loves, and losses of Malcolm X.

James Byrd, Jr. was murdered in Jasper, Texas. A black family man, Byrd had been severely beaten by three white men, chained to their truck, and dragged three miles through predominately black parts of the county. This racially motivated killing shook the country, and revealed the intense hate that still lies just beneath the surface of our society. Instead of following the story in a typical American media fashion, Akerman allows the story to slowly unfold on its own. Long, panning shots set the stage, creating the world of Jasper. Patient interviews reveal the thoughts and emotions of the local townspeople. Akerman's access to their lives, including being allowed to film Byrd's funeral, allows her to tell the tale in a pensive and beautiful fashion.

In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York's Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they're making.

Gives voice to communities of black gay men, presenting their cultures and perspectives on the world as they confront racism, homophobia, and marginalization.

A portrait of African-Americans in New Orleans struggling to maintain their unique cultural identity and to find social justice. Shot in very sharp black and white, the film is focused on Judy, trying to keep her family afloat and save her bar before it's snapped up by speculators; Ronaldo and Titus, two brothers growing up surrounded by violence and with a father in jail; Kevin, trying to keep the glorious local traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians alive; and the local Black Panthers, trying to stand up against a new, deadly wave of racism.

The story of a father and daughter whose close-knit, tender relationship is disrupted by a handsome young suitor.

When Adelaide Norris, the black radical founder of the Woman's Army, is mysteriously killed, a diverse coalition of women - across all lines of race, class, and sexual preference - emerges to blow the System apart.

Racial tensions grow in a Brooklyn neighborhood on the hottest day of the summer.

Over the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the decaying rural South must confront a tangle of difficult choices. An ambitiously constructed, elegantly photographed meditation on adolescence, the first full-length film by director David Gordon Green features remarkable performances from an award-winning ensemble cast.

A black man discovers a sinister conspiracy while visiting his white girlfriend's family.

Fed up with her abusive family situation, lack of school prospects and the "boys' law" in the neighborhood, Marieme starts a new life after meeting a group of three free-spirited girls. She changes her name, her style, drops out of school and starts stealing to be accepted into the gang. When her home situation becomes unbearable, Marieme seeks solace in an older man who promises her money and protection. Realizing this sort of lifestyle will never result in the freedom and independence she truly desires, she finally decides to take matters into her own hands.

Mignon Dupree, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white, and Ester Jeeter, an African woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star, are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo.

A black man dreams of owning the house his grandfather built, now in a white neighborhood in San Francisco.

In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoeshiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation.

When the Congo declared its independence from Belgium in 1960, Lumumba became the first Prime Minister of the newly independent state. Called "the politico of the bush" by journalists of the day, he became a lightning rod of Cold War politics as his vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies in Belgium and the U.S.

Directed by Spike Lee, and featuring an all-star cast, this film tells the story of Malcolm X, who through his conversion to Islam, found the strength to rise up from a criminal past to become an influential civil rights leader.

A moving and transcendent look at three defining chapters in the life of Chiron, a young man growing up in Miami. His epic journey to adulthood, as a shy outsider dealing with difficult circumstances, is guided by support, empathy and love from the most unexpected places.

An illiterate, pregnant teen finds hope at an alternative school, where a sympathetic teacher and a nurse change the course of her life in ways she hadn't thought possible.

Despite a political rivalry between their families, Kena and Ziki resist and remain close friends, supporting each other to pursue their dreams in a conservative society. When love blossoms between them, the two girls will be forced to choose between happiness and safety.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historical struggle to secure voting rights for all people. A dangerous and terrifying campaign that culminated with an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1964.
"The unforgettable true story chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernay's "Selma" tells the story of how the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and his brothers and sisters in the movement prompted change that forever altered history."--Written by Miss W J Mcdermott on IMDb.com.

Supercool PI John Shaft is hired by a Harlem mobster to find his kidnapped teenage daughter, which leads him to a black-militant group and a gang of Mafia hit men.

A prostitute returns to L.A. after a prison stint to seek out her cheating pimp boyfriend and the other woman.

A video store clerk and fledgling filmmaker, Cheryl becomes obsessed with the "most beautiful mammy," a character she sees in a 1930s movie. Determined to find out who the actress she knows only as the "Watermelon Woman" was and make her the subject of a documentary, she starts researching and is bowled over to discover that not only was Fae Richards (Lisa Marie Bronson) a fellow Philadelphian but also a lesbian.

Sylvia Landry (Evelyn Preer) takes a fundraising trip to Boston in hopes of raising money to keep a Southern school for impoverished black children open to the public. She then meets the warmhearted Dr. Vivian (Charles D. Lucas), who falls in love with Sylvia and travels with her back to the South. Their romance eventually leads to revelations about her family's past and her own mixed-race, European ancestry.

In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists, and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom.

Note: Available for free on Netflix.

Part film, part baptism, BLACK MOTHER brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, director Khalik Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed in both the sacred and the profane, BLACK MOTHER channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but unfolding in the urgent present.

Note: Available for free via The Criterion Channel.

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 short is also a powerful political statement.

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel.

Mobilizing a treasure trove of 16mm footage shot by Swedish journalists who came to the US drawn by stories of unrest and revolution, The Black Power Mixtape showcases many of the leaders of the Black Power Movement.

Note: Available through Amazon Prime.

Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation.

Note: Available for free on Vimeo. Password is loverevolution.

Released in 1986 as a cultural response to social unrest in Birmingham and London in October 1985, looking at the way events unfolded, the two deaths (that of black woman Cynthia Jarrett and white policeman Keith Blakelock), and the subsequent media reaction.

Note: Available for free online.

Happy Birthday, Marsha! is a film about iconic transgender artist and activist, Marsha "Pay it no Mind" Johnson, and her life in the hours before she ignited the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

Note: Available to rent through Amazon Prime.

This intimate, in-depth look at Beyoncé's celebrated 2018 Coachella performance reveals the emotional road from creative concept to cultural movement.

Note: Available on Netflix.

Christine Choy and Cynthia Maurizio offer a rare look at the degradation faced by women in prison, interviewing women who suffer daily within a system that disregards their humanity and neglects their basic needs.

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel.

The award-winning documentary follows the story of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a 73 year-old Black transgender woman who has been fighting for the rights of trans women of color for the past forty years.

Note: Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

Compilation of footage of the struggle of North American Black people against racial discrimination.

Note: Available for free on Youtube.

Charting the eight-year run of Shakedown, a peripatetic black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles, director Leilah Weinraub attempts “to portray the before and after of a utopic moment.”

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel.

American 2017 true-crime documentary film directed by Yance Ford. The film centers on the April 1992 murder of Ford's brother William, a 24-year-old African-American teacher in New York, who was killed by Mark P. Reilly, a 19-year-old white chop shop mechanic.

Note: Available on Netflix.

Powerful film based on the true story of a man kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Note: Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt -- until a miracle reunites them.

Note: Available on Netflix.

In a searing parody of American television and racial attitudes a young African American network executive, under pressure from his white boss, creates a minstrel show, hoping that it will fail and that he will be released from his network contract -- but the TV show becomes both a hit and the subject of much controversy.

Note: Only available on DVD through the F&M College Library.

In a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee, a six-year-old girl exists on the brink of orphanhood. Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural order is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality.

Note: Available for rent on Amazon Prime.

Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world.

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel.

A charmingly laid-back, socially incisive love story set in the heart of Louisiana. It’s there that a forbidden romance between an aspiring writer (Richard Romain) and an ambitious, college-bound woman (Tommye Myrick) lays bare the tensions between two black communities: the wealthy Creoles and the working-class descendants of slaves.

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel

In 1902, a multigenerational family in the Gullah community on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina—former West African slaves who carried on many of their ancestors’ Yoruba traditions—struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland, even further from their roots.

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel.

Following a young 10-year-old girl, Eve Batiste, and her family in the 1960s, Eve's Bayou dwells on the unreliability of memory and observation.

Note: Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

This Sundance award-winner follows the true events of a 22-year-old loving father and beloved son on the last day of his life before being fatally shot by police on New Year's Day 2009.

Note: Available to rent on Amazon Prime.

Based on the novel by James Baldwin, "If Beale Street Could Talk" is a soulful drama about a young couple fighting for justice in the name of love and the promise of the American dream.

Note: Available through Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Two Mississippi families -- one Black, one white -- confront the brutal realities of prejudice, farming and friendship in a divided World War II era.

Note: Available on Netflix.

A quixotic artist hypothesizes about why he feels bad when a mystery girl stands him up. The event prompts him to ask: what's the content of a momentary feeling? Is it the sum of your experiences? And, perhaps more importantly, are your experiences the sum of you?

Note: Available on Amazon Prime.

A sci-fi film about Africa in the future, 35 years after World War III, the water war.

Note: Available on Vimeo for free.

Tells the story of an African immigrant surviving on the fringes of New York City where music is his passion, life is a hustle and falling in love is his greatest risk.

Note: Available to rent through Amazon Prime.

A story about the transformation of a self-possessed African-American woman sent on a spiritual journey in time to experience the pain of slavery and the discovery of her African identity.

Note: Only available on DVD through F&M College Library.

Four close friends in Los Angeles decide to rob a bank, wanting better lives for themselves and their families.

Note: Available to rent through Amazon Prime.

American blaxploitation crime drama film directed by Gordon Parks Jr. and starring Ron O'Neal as Youngblood Priest, an African American pimp and cocaine dealer who is trying to quit the underworld drug business.

Note: Available to rent through Amazon Prime.

In this French New Wave-influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical.

Note: Available through The Criterion Channel.

Vitalina plays a Cape Verdean woman who has travelled to Lisbon to reunite with her husband, after two decades of separation, only to arrive mere days after his funeral. Alone in a strange forbidding land, she perseveres and begins to establish a new life.

Note: Available to rent through Amazon Prime.