Search Results for: african americans
Dayshal Dicks with her niece Brianna Hallingquest
Beyond the Films
February, 23, 2016

African Americans Hit Hardest by HIV in the South

Lisa Ko in Beyond the Films

While HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence to the same extent it was 20 years ago, 50,000 Americans are diagnosed with HIV each year, and the disparities are startling when broken down by race, gender, and region. As reflected…
Beyond the Films
January, 10, 2013

‘Green Book’ Helped Keep African Americans Safe on the Road

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

In Soul Food Junkies, filmmaker Byron Hurt briefly describes what it used to be like for African Americans to travel in the United States. He talks about how blacks would take along boxed lunches in order to avoid being turned away…
Ballerinas Raven Wilkinson and Misty Copeland hold hands.
Beyond the Films
February, 4, 2016

Breaking Barriers on Stage: African American Ballet Dancers Who Made History

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

As we learn in A Ballerina's Tale, Nelson George's new documentary about Misty Copeland's Eurocentric standards of body shape, muscle tone, and skin color excluded dancers who didn't fit the wan mold demanded of prima ballerinas. All that changed in the summer of…
February, 16, 2015

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People

Independent Lens

The first documentary to explore the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations, and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present, Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People probes the recesses…
February, 17, 2004

A Place of Our Own

Independent Lens

Each summer, affluent and successful African Americans like filmmaker Stanley Nelson return to Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard, an upper middle class resort community that has historically provided an oasis for black professionals.
Chol Soo Lee, in San Quentin prison
Behind the Films
April, 18, 2023

What Happened to Chol Soo Lee?

Independent Lens in Behind the Films

By Bedatri D. Choudhury Chol Soo Lee was a Korean American immigrant wrongfully convicted in 1974 of murdering a Chinatown gang leader in San Francisco. After a decade of being incarcerated, serving four of those ten years on death row,…
A group of football players stand on the sidelines of a field during a game.
Behind the Films
February, 14, 2023

Beyond Football: Pahokee, Florida’s History of Black Resilience

Independent Lens in Behind the Films

This community and the surrounding area around the southern shores of Lake Okeechobee, Florida, has a rich history, but the people of Pahokee's past has often been skipped over, even by those who live there.  Ira McKinley, whose family hails…
Woman with medium skin tone and long braids sits at a table speaking energetically with others.
Behind the Films
January, 16, 2023

From Podcast to Doc: Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow on Their Reparation Collaboration

Independent Lens in Behind the Films

Will the burden to make restitution for Black Americans ever be addressed, or is it too late for a reparations movement to finally happen? That question is at the center of the provocative documentary The Big Payback, which focuses especially…
An Asian American student smiles at graduation, wearing a burgundy cap and gown.
Behind the Films
April, 22, 2022

Telling Asian American Stories That Resonate: Filmmaker Explores Why These High School Students Are Stressed Out

Independent Lens in Behind the Films

During her long time living in the San Francisco Bay Area, filmmaker Debbie Lum was greatly influenced by working as an editor for documentarian Spencer Nakasako. Lum as a youth was transfixed by American and World cinema, but came of…
A man with medium-dark skin tone hugs a young woman with curly hair in the hallway of a school.
Behind the Films
January, 6, 2022

Filmmaker and Clemente Course Students Team Up to Reckon with Systemic Racism

Independent Lens in Behind the Films

A most unusual arrangement helped A Reckoning in Boston get to its final form. Three individuals with widely divergent backgrounds teamed up for what became a collaborative story about Clemente Course students of color reckoning with Boston's racial history. Filmmaker…
scene from Griffith's Birth of a Nation wherein the Klan surround a "mulatto man" (played by a white actor in blackface), in the film Birth of a Movement
November, 16, 2021

Birth of a Movement

Independent Lens

A co-presentation with WNET/Thirteen. In 1915, Boston-based African American newspaper editor and activist William M. Trotter waged a battle against D.W. Griffith’s technically groundbreaking but notoriously Ku Klux Klan-friendly The Birth of a Nation, unleashing a fight that still rages…
Side mirror with image from Real Dirt on Farmer John in the mirror
Lists
September, 17, 2021

Road Trippin’ Part I: These Documentaries Will Show You All 50 States

Independent Lens in Lists

Rev up your virtual station wagon and pack your bags for a road trip across America through documentary film. No documentary or double feature will capture an entire state's essence, and not all these films will be featured by the…