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

Summary: The life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, and culminating with his assassination in Memphis in 1968. Including archival footage, this film is an indispensable primary resource of a pivotal moment in American and world history. Originally screened in theaters for only a single night in 1970.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2013

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: Explores the motivation behind European global subjugation, the history of rarely discussed vast West African empires, how germ warfare is used on melanted people, and the history of slave breeding farms in America.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: Continues the history of people of African descent, including topics such as the global African presence, the science of melanin, the truth about the prison industrial complex, how thriving black economic communities were undermined in America, hidden truths about Native Americans, and more.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2013

Copies Available at Woodmere

Rockwell, Anne F.

Summary: The true story of James Lafayette, a spy in the American Revolution. After America won its freedom, James returned to slavery. But James's fight for freedom wasn't over.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: The passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented not the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, but the beginning of a new, crucial chapter. Nowhere was this next battle better epitomized than in Lowndes County, Alabama, a rural, impoverished county with a vicious history of racist terrorism. In a county that was 80 percent Black but had zero Black voters, laws were just paper...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2023

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "With historic reenactments, expert interviews, and first-hand accounts, learn about the people, bloody wars, and undenieable truths that have brought us up from slavery to emancipation road on the march to freedom"--container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2016

Copies Available at Fife Lake

Summary: Trail of tears : Cherokee legacy: Documents the forced removal in 1838 of the Cherokee Nation from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma. Shows the suffering endured by the Cherokees as they lost their land and the difficult conditions they endured on the trail. Describes how thousands of Cherokees died during the Trail of Tears, nearly a quarter of the nation, including most of their...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Mill Creek Entertainment 2009

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "From the Newark Rebellion of 1967 to current day, the city's narrative has been one of revolution with each generation picking up where the previous had left off. WHY IS WE AMERICANS? weighs in on Newark's struggle against oppression through the personal triumphs and tragedies of the Baraka family -- from Amiri's civil rights leadership and ultimate artistic marginalization, to the horrific...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2022

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: This film reveals the untold story of a Filipina American garage band that morphed into the ferocious rock group Fanny, who almost became the female Beatles.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: This compilation of five early short films by Martin Scorsese offers a fascinating window onto his artistic development. Spanning the years from Scorsese's time at NYU in the mid-1960s to the late '70s.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: I am somebody : Records the 1969 strike by black, predominantly female, hospital workers in Charleston, S.C. for better working conditions and higher wages. Shows how the struggle was won by a coalition of local and national union and civil rights groups plus the local black community through nonviolent marches and demonstrations. Highlights Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Abernathy,...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Comprehensive history of six great Indian nations, dramatically filmed on location. Also includes the stories of four heroic Native American leaders: Geronimo, Quanah, Parker Chief Joseph and Crazy Horse.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Questar 2007

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Rodrigo Reyes₂ provocative essay film re-imagines the Mexico/U.S. border as a mythical place comparable to Dante₂s purgatory. Leaving politics aside, he takes a fresh look at the brutal beauty of the border and the people caught in its spell. By capturing a stunning mosaic of compelling characters and broken landscapes on the border, Reyes reflects on the flaws of human nature and the powerful...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2015

Copies Available at Woodmere

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

Summary: "Chicago suffered the worst heat disaster in U.S history in 1995, when 739 residents--mostly elderly and black--died over the course of one week. As Cooked links the deadly heat wave's devastation back to the underlying manmade disaster of structural racism, it delves deep into one of our nation's biggest growth industries: Disaster Preparedness. Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2020

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: "Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming - despite the odds"--Container.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2018

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them, this documentary traces the untold history of Black Americans in Hollywood through their connection to the horror genre. Adapting Robin Means Coleman's seminal book, this will present the living and the dead, using new and archival interviews from scholars and creators;...

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: 2021

Copies Available at Woodmere

Summary: Master documentary filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and a flood of rich archival material. A journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.

Format: moving image

Publisher / Publication Date: Magnolia Home Entertainment 2017

Copies Available at Woodmere