Here is a small list you can watch and where to watch them. Consider it a starting point for greater appreciation and awareness of Black filmmakers and stories. And an opportunity to gain understanding and solidarity with the ongoing movement toward equality and justice and against racism.
I Am Not Your Negro
Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary, which is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, takes up the story of James Baldwin’s unfinished memoir Remember This House, which pays tribute to assassinated Black leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The film also features archival interviews with Baldwin as he reflects on America and its history of racism.
Watch it on VPRO2Doc.
Do the right thing
Barack and Michelle Obama went to see this film during ther very first date in 1989. This classic by Spike Lee shows you racial tenssions on one of the hottest days between Deze klassieker van Spike Italian – & African American citizens of Brooklyn. Unfortunately, the film is still strangely actual in modern day America.
See it at KINO & LantarenVenster.
Selma
Ava DuVernay’s Oscar-winning historical drama (our movie of the year for 2014) stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, Jr. during his marches for equal voting rights in Alabama in 1966. Nominated for Best Picture (and snubbed in the Best Director category), Selma also features Oprah Winfrey, Common, Tessa Thompson, Niecy Nash, LaKeith Stanfield, Wendell Pierce, and Carmen Ejogo playing Coretta Scott King for the second time, plus Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Watch it on BBC 2: Friday 19 on Saturday 20 June: 0.20 hrs (CET) or Pathé Thuis.
13th
Offering a razor-toothed interrogation about how issues pertaining to race, justice, and mass incarceration are savagely intertwined, Ava DuVernay’s Netflix Originals documentary is devastating, impassioned, well researched, and breathtakingly smart.
The movie explores the history of racial inequality in America, while also questioning why the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans. The answers proposed in 13th are staggering.
Watch it on Netflix.
Get Out
Offering a horrifying racial dialogue that capably burrows into black identity, African-American fears, and the insidious underlying threat of white supremacy, Get Out offers a set of scares that provide parallels to sociopolitical tensions.
Thankfully, Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning horror also provided some comedic relief, as he told Deadline, “With the Black Lives Matter movement and attention to police brutality, it was clear people had a certain fatigue from those horrors, and needed a hero, an escape, as well as a way to confront it.”
Watch it on Pathé Thuis.
The Hate U Give
Based on Angie Thomas’s critically acclaimed young adult novel of the same name, George Tillman Jr.’s upcoming adaptation looks to be just as thoughtful and perceptive as the book. The film follows a young woman (Amandla Stenberg) who discovers her strong political voice after witnessing a cop fatally shooting her childhood best friend and it boasts a cast including Regina Hall, K.J. Apa, Anthony Mackie, Common, and Issa Rae.
Thomas has said she titled the book after Tupac’s “THUG LIFE” concept (“The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody”), which should indicate just how ferocious and powerful this tale gets.
Watch it on Pathé Thuis.
Studio Erasmus IFFR 2017
During International Film Festival 2017 racism, stereotyping and cinema came up in this interview of our very own Studio Erasmus with cultural sociologist Julian Schaap and journalist Malique Mohamud.
Watch it on YouTube.