Summary: While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft, a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2022
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Action / Adventure DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY ACTION/ADVENTURE SHASummary: The story of the 'Fighting 99th' - the first squadron of black American pilots to be allowed to fight for their country. It is 1943 and the U.S. is suffering huge losses on the ground and in the air. Four newly recruited pilots are united by a desire to serve their country, at a time when black flyers were not welcomed in the Air Force. Now, the "Tuskegee Airmen" must undertake the riskiest...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2010
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD DRAMA TUSCopies Available at Interlochen
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD Movie TuskegeeSummary: Celebrate African American history with this historic collection of stories. Collection includes: Rosa ; Henry's freedom box ; Lincoln and Douglass ; and, Ellington was not a street. Bonus interview with Nikki Giovanni. Bonus interview with Ellen Levine.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2017
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Juvenile Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD JUV STOSummary: The desperadoes: Steve Upton is the sheriff of a Utah community in 1860. Upton's best friend, Cheyenne Rogers, was once an outlaw, but under Steve's guidance, has gone straight and tries to earn an honest living. But when a bank is robbed, Cheyenne is the prime suspect and will need Upton's help to save him from a lynching.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Western DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY WESTERN RANSummary: An adaptation of Alex Haley's "Roots", in which Haley traces his African American family's history from the mid-18th century to the Reconstruction era.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Warner Home Video 2007
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Television Series DVDs, Call number: DVD TV ROOSummary: When Tony Lip, a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley, a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on a book to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism, danger, as well as unexpected humanity and humor, they are forced to set...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2011
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Comedy DVDs, Call number: DVD + BLU-RAY COMEDY GRESummary: 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.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: New Line Home Entertainment 2001
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Comedy DVDs, Call number: DVD COMEDY BAMSummary: Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2023
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Crime / Mystery DVDs, Call number: DVD + BLU-RAY TILSummary: Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till Mobley's relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie's poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother's ability to change the world.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Universal 2023
Copies Available at East Bay
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD MOVIE TILCopies Available at Interlochen
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD Movie TillCopies Available at Peninsula
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD TILCopies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Browsing Hot DVDs, Call number: DVD TILSummary: "What begins as a hopeful journey to seek a better life becomes a harrowing and primal fight for survival when a deranged, rifle-toting vigilante chases a group of unarmed men and women through the treacherous U.S.-Mexican border. In the harsh, unforgiving desert terrain, the odds are stacked firmly against them as they continuously discover there's nowhere to hide from the unrelenting,...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2017
Copies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD DESSummary: Dancing great Bill Williamson takes a look back on the beginnings of his career and his romance with fellow rising star Selina. Their romance is brief because Selina does not want to settle down.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment 2005
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Musicals DVDs, Call number: DVD MUSICALS STOSummary: "All-American athlete, scholar, renowned baritone, stage actor, and social activist, Paul Robeson ... the son of an escaped slave, managed to become a top-billed movie star during the time of Jim Crow America ... his film legacy lives on and continues to speak eloquently of the long and difficult journey of a courageous and outspoken African-American."--Container.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2007
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD DRAMA PAUSummary: Melvin B. Tolson is a professor at Wiley College in Texas. Wiley is a small African-American college. In 1935, Tolson inspired students to form the school's first debate team. Tolson turns a group of underdog students into a historically elite debate team which goes on to challenge Harvard in the national championship. Inspired by a true story.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Weinstein Co. 2008
Copies Available at Woodmere
2 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD DRAMA GRECopies Available at Interlochen
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD Movie Great 2008Summary: The gripping story is told through four generations, from the capture of Kunta Kinte in Africa to his transport to Colonial America in brutal conditions through successive generations fighting to win their freedom in the Civil War.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2016
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Television Series DVDs, Call number: DVD TV ROOSummary: A fictional account of one amazing night where icons Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown gathered discussing their roles in the Civil Rights Movement and cultural turmoil of the '60s.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD DRAMA ONECopies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD ONESummary: A fictional account of one amazing night where icons Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown gathered discussing their roles in the Civil Rights Movement and cultural turmoil of the '60s.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY DRAMA ONESummary: Among the most fascinating chapters of film history is that of the so-called "race films" that flourished in the 1920s -'40s. Unlike the "black cast" films produced within the Hollywood studio system, these films not only starred African Americans but were funded, written, produced, edited, distributed, and often exhibited by people of color. Entrepreneurial filmmakers built an industry apart...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2016
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC PIO1 available in Sight & Sound Print Material, Call number: SSC DVD DOC PIO
Summary: Cool, no-nonsense private detective Joe Mannix is a tough-talking loner within the large detective agency Intertect. He has street smarts and class, but he constantly fights with his boss, Lew Wickersham, over how to conduct their investigations. Lew relies on the company's computers, but Mannix has to go with his gut-- and that's just what he does every time.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Paramount Home Entertainment 2008
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Television Series DVDs, Call number: DVD TV MANSummary: 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 rate at which the young Black men around her are dying, brash Oakland art student Pica attempts to preserve their existence in Polaroid snapshots, along the way forging a friendship with a woman in an...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2023
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY DRAMA DRYSummary: Based on Parks' semi-autobiographical novel, the film follows the journey of Newt Winger, a teenage descendant of Exodusters growing up in rural Kansas in the 1920s, as he experiences the bittersweet flowering of first love, finds his relationship with a close friend tested, and navigates the injustices embedded within a racist legal and educational system. Exquisitely capturing the bucolic...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2021
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: BLU-RAY DRAMA LEASummary: Mississippi during the 1960s: Skeeter, a southern society girl, returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives, and a small Mississippi town, upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen, Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up, to the dismay of her...
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: Touchstone Home Entertainment 2011
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Drama DVDs, Call number: DVD + BLU-RAY DRAMA HELSummary: Filmmaker Byron Hurt looks at the past and future of soul food, covering its roots in Western Africa, its incarnation in the American South, and the role it plays in the health crisis in the African American community. Examines the socioeconomics of the modern American diet, and how the food industry profits from producing cheap calories while healthy options remain expensive and hard to find.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: PBS 2013