Summary: Chronicling the riveting history and personal experiences, at once liberating and challenging, harrowing and inspiring, deeply revealing and profoundly transforming, of African Americans on the road from the advent of the automobile through the seismic changes of the 1960s and beyond, it explores the deep background of a recent phrase rooted in realities that have been an indelible part of the...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV DRI

Summary: In his acclaimed debut as a filmmaker, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson presents a powerful and transporting documentary, part music film, part historical record, created around an epic event that celebrated Black history, culture, and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in the summer of 1969, just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, The Harlem Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

3 available in Music DVDs, Call number: DVD MUSIC SUM

Summary: From award-winning director/producer Peter Kunhardt, King in the Wilderness follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the volatile last three years of his life, from the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to his assassination in April 1968. Drawing on revelatory stories from his inner circle of friends, the film provides a clear window into the civil rights leader's character, showing...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV KIN

Summary: Based on newly declassified files, Sam Pollard's resonant film explores the US government's surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: IFC Films 2022

Copies Available at East Bay

1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD 323.1196 MLK

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC MLK

Copies Available at Kingsley

1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD MLK

Summary: "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature length documentary to explore the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails. Master documentarian Stanley Nelson goes straight to the source, weaving a treasure trove of rare archival...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV BLA

Summary: "The essential memoir of fashion pioneer Bethann Hardison, INVISIBLE BEAUTY shines a spotlight on the singular and unapologetic Hardison, one of the fasion industry's most influential icons. Hardison and her codirector Frédéric Tcheng set forth an absorbing record of the racial evolution of fashion and an original contemplation on the life of an unparalleled trailblazer."--Container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in NEW Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD DOC INV

Summary: "On June 12, 1970, Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 136 years of baseball history, only 276 no-hitters have been recorded. Dock is the only pitcher to ever claim he accomplished his while high on LSD. During his 12 years in the major leagues, Dock lived the expression "Black is Beautiful!" He wore curlers on the field. He stepped out of his Cadillac wearing the widest...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2014

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC NO

Summary: In his final film as director, Gordon Parks turned the camera upon himself and created a deeply personal and remarkably poetic self-portrait. Moments Without Proper Names blends Parks's striking photographs with newly-shot footage of the artist, his own musical compositions, and personal reminiscences performed by a trio of esteemed actors: Avery Brooks, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Joe Seneca.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC MOM

Summary: 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

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in E-TV DVDs, Call number: DVD E-TV SOU

Summary: The brilliant work, personal struggles, and cultural impact of iconic American writers Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams explodes onto the screen in this innovative dual-portrait documentary. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Love, Cecil, and Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel) masterfully collages a wealth of archival material, including dishy talk show appearances with David Frost and...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC TRU

Summary: An artful and intimate meditation on the life and works of the acclaimed novelist. From her childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio to '70s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, from the front lines with Angela Davis to her own riverfront writing room, Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, America, history and the human condition as...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC TON

Summary: The documentary explores the intersection between Colin Kaepernick's anthem protests and the reactions they spurred in the United States, revealing unique insights into America's ongoing racial turmoil.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC KAP

Summary: After the death in 2004 of American theater actor and monologist Spalding Gray, director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) pieced together a narrative of Gray's life to create the documentary And Everything is Going Fine. Brilliantly and sensitively assembled entirely from footage of Gray, taken from interviews and one-man shows from throughout his career, it is a rich, full portrait, and...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2012

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC AND

Summary: Recounting the extraordinary life of author Kurt Vonnegut, and the 25-year friendship with the filmmaker Bob Weide, who set out to document it.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC KUR

Summary: A look at the history of the American comedy publication and production company, National Lampoon, from its beginning in the 1970s to 2010. The influence the magazine has had on our culture through turbulent times, morphing into Second City, Saturday Night Live, and the movies, and the stars and sorrows it has produced.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

2 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC DRU

Summary: One of the country's preminent and prolific serious writers, Joyce Carol Oates is the author of more than 100 novels, including Them, We Were the Mulvaneys and Blonde. In this candid and revealing documentary, she provides insight into her life, creative process, and the events that have shaped her writings, including the 1967 Detroit Riot, the Chappaquiddick incident, and the tragic life of...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC JOY

Summary: Documents the obscure country blues musician and idiosyncratic visual artist, Howard 'Louie Bluie' Armstrong, member of the last known black string band in America. Director Terry Zwigoff honors him with an unsentimental but endlessly affectionate tribute. Full of infectious music and comedy, this is a humane evocation of the kind of pop-cultural marginalia that Zwigoff would continue to make...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Criterion Collection 2010

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC LOU

Summary: Recounts the triumph and travails of the eighteen African American athletes representing the United States in the 1936 Olympics, who endured racism in Hitler's Berlin as well as back home in the United States.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in TC Film Fest DVDs, Call number: DVD TCFF OLY

Summary: Examines the circumstances surrounding the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Gravitas Ventures 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in TC Film Fest DVDs, Call number: DVD TCFF STR

Summary: An investigation into the disputed cause of death of black activist Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in Waller County, Texas, after a routine traffic stop by state trooper Brian Encinia.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2019

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC SAY

Summary: Long story short: Presents interview segments in which California's poor and homeless discuss the disadvantages of living without adequate resources.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in NEW Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD DOC POR

Summary: Answered Prayers was meant to be Truman Capote's greatest masterpiece, an epic novel of New York City's glittering jet-set society, following his smashing success with Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. Instead, it sparked his downfall. Through access to never-before-heard audio archives and interviews with Capote's friends and enemies, including Dick Cavett, Lauren Bacall, Norman Mailer...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

1 available in Documentary DVDs, Call number: DVD DOC CAP