The collective uprisings all across the world in response to centuries of systemic white supremacy, but more specifically the recent murders of several Black people in the United States, have many people turning to art to help process their feelings of rage, helplessness and sorrow.
Social media feeds have transformed into memorials to the lives that have been stolen, with drawings re-imagining them as royalty and others that have them adorned in flowers. James Baldwin and other late historical figures’ works have experienced an exhumation, with their decades-old musings eerily speaking to today’s societal anxieties.
Books are often the first places that people go to seek guidance for our troubled times, but those lists can feel overwhelming and not conducive to our sense of urgency. Enter: movies. With the wealth of streaming services today offering up an array of titles, it can be difficult to know where to start. Though many lists seem to emphasize works that depict the brutalities of Black American life, here is a selection that can hopefully offer just a glimpse into the full breadth of the Black American experience.
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Night Catches Us
Image Credit: Simonsays/Kobal/Shutterstock It’s quite unfortunate that Tanya Hamilton’s 2010 directorial debut “Night Catches Us” premiered just a few years shy of when talk surrounding the lack of diversity in Hollywood reached its boiling point. It’s the kind of work that should’ve put Hamilton in the same conversations as Ava DuVernay or Barry Jenkins. Following the story of a former Black Panther (Anthony Mackie) who returns to Philadelphia under the suspicion that he was responsible for another member’s death, “Night Catches Us” is a quiet meditation on redemption, family, and heartache.
Watch on Tubi.
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Get on the Bus
Image Credit: Columbia Tristar/Kobal/Shutterst Many of the movie recommendation lists currently circulating will (rightfully) suggest you watch Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” however his “Get on the Bus” is worth watching as well. Lee’s 1996 film is about a group of Black men who travel by bus to get to the Million Man March explores the friction and the intimacies between Black men across the generational, sexual and political spectrum.
Watch on Netflix.
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Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners
Image Credit: Courtesy of Shola Lynch Dr. Angela Davis is a foundational voice in the modern day abolitionist movement. This Shola Lynch-helmed documentary follows Davis’ days as a rising figure in the prison abolition movement and her highly publicized trial where she was accused of being a co-conspirator to a 1970 murder-kidnapping.
Watch on Tubi.
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Dead Presidents
Image Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock In The Hughes brothers’ 1996 “Dead Presidents,” a group of Black soldiers coming home from Vietnam grapple with re-acclimating to their personal lives and a country in the midst of sociopolitical upheaval. This film would also serve as a great double feature with Spike Lee’s new “Da Five Bloods.”
Watch on Vudu.
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Tangerine
Image Credit: Augustas Quirk/Magnolia/Duplass “Tangerine” isn’t necessarily a film that will help you glean anything about This Moment In Time™ — however the story about the day in the life of two Black trans sex workers is still worth your attention. Lauded at the time because it was filmed entirely on an iPhone, Sean Baker’s 2015 film showcases what should have been star-making performances from leads Maya Turner and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez in a movie about survival, betrayal, and friendship on the mean streets of Hollywood.
Watch on Hulu or rental on Amazon, iTunes and more.
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Hollywood Shuffle
Image Credit: Conquering Unicorn/Sam Goldwyn/K In this 1987 satire about being a working Black actor, co-writer, director, and star Robert Townsend tries to navigate his way to the top of show business while trying to hold on to his dignity, mercilessly skewering stereotypes along the way.
Watch on Vudu.
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Birth of a Movement
The release of D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” took the concept of art as propaganda to new heights. In “Birth of a Movement,” historians, critics, and film buffs including Spike Lee, Reginald Hudlin, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and DJ Spooky explore the film’s complicated place in cinematic history, its role in reinvigorating the Klu Klux Klan, and the Black activists at the time who tried to get the film shut down.
Watch on Amazon Prime.
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Watermelon Woman
Image Credit: Dancing Girl/Kobal/Shutterstock The legacy of “The Watermelon Woman” includes the film famously being derided members of Congress who believed that government film funding shouldn’t have gone to a movie that depicted lesbian sex. However, Cheryl Dunye’s directing debut is much deeper than that. In “The Watermelon Woman,” Dunye plays a fictionalized version of herself as an aspiring documentarian on the quest for a Black actress from the days of old Hollywood who is simply credited in a film as “The Watermelon Woman.” In this story about the erasure many Black women experience, viewers begin to realize the metacommentary the film is making.
Watch on Amazon Prime.
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Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed
Image Credit: Courtesy of PBS It is, of course, an election year, and in an election season that came close to giving us a Black woman as a nominee on a major party’s ticket, it is worth revisiting the life of Shirley Chisholm. In another Shola Lynch-directed documentary, “Unbought & Unbossed” follows Chisholm’s historic political career and her bid as the Democrat nominee for president.
Watch on Amazon Prime.
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Middle of Nowhere
Image Credit: Courtesy of Array Now For the short time that Ava DuVernay has been working as a filmmaker, much of her work has centered around the intricacies and the cruelties of the criminal punitive system. In her sophomore release, “Middle of Nowhere,” DuVernay brings to life the character of Ruby, a woman whose life is stalled by her husband’s incarceration. We watch as Ruby decides whether to move on to a new life without her husband or stay in a perpetual state of nowhere.
Rent on Amazon, iTunes, etc.