AFAM Film Collection
African and African American Studies Film List
Last Updated: 12/06/16
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NOTE: List below is out-of-date. Updating is in progress. Use printable version above.
Title | Format | Duration | Description | Year |
| 12 Years a Slave | DVD | 134 min. | Solomon Northup, a free black man in 1840s is shanghaied by a pair of nefarious white men, and soon finds himself on a ship headed to New Orleans where he is informed he will be called Platt and is sold into slavery by an unscrupulous businessman. | 2013 |
| 500 Hundred Years Later | DVD | 116 min | The authentic retrospective voice, told from the African vantage point of those whom history has sought to silence. | 2007 |
| Africa (National Geographic Series) | DVD | 540 min (Eight episodes: 60 min each) | Series presents Africa through the eyes of its people, conveying the diversity and beauty of the land and the compelling personal stories. | 2001 |
| Africa Dreaming | DVD | 104 min | This series is comprised of four dramatic shorts on the broad theme of “love in Africa. | 1997 |
| African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to Present | 2 DVD Set | The project provides an opportunity for African-Americans and Mexicans to embrace a common cultural past. | 2006 | |
| Africans in America | VHS | 360 min (Four episodes: 90 min each) | Interviews with historians with re-creations of important events, and beautiful photography create a story of more than 400 years of tragedy. | 1998 |
| Afro-Cuba: Yesterday and Today | DVD | 72 min | Two exciting, colorful films spotlight the African roots of Cuba s culture by focusing on two legendary artists in this unique box set. | 2005 |
| Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance | DVD | 60 min | Documentary tells how Black artists triumphed over the prejudice and segregation that kept their work out of mainstream galleries and exhibitions. | 1994 |
| All About Darfur | DVD | 82 min | Documentary showing how racial fault lines have become the dividing boundaries between groups battling for scarce economic resources. | 2005 |
| Alex Haley | DVD | 50 min | The transformation of a college dropout into one of America's most powerful writers. Alex Haley | 1992 |
American Experiences: The Abolitionists | DVD | 180 min. | The abolitionists tore the nation apart in order to create a more perfect union. Men and women, black and white, Northerners and Southerners, poor and wealthy--these passionate anti-slavery activists fought body and soul in the most important civil rights crusade in American history. What began as a pacifist movement fueled by persuasion and prayer became a fiery and furious struggle that forever changed the nation. | 2013 |
| Amistad | DVD | 155 min | A slave ship traveling from Cuba to the US in 1839 carrying a cargo of Africans who have been sold into slavery in Cuba. | 1997 |
| Aristide and the Endless Revolution | DVD | 82 min | Detailed account of the United States' removal of Haiti's democratically elected president, Aristide. | 2005 |
| Asante: The Kingdom of Gold | DVD | 30 min | The Asante nation was carved out of gold. The Golden Stool unites the people. Their history and culture is unique and lives on to date. | 2007 |
| Berlin 1885: The Division of Africa | DVD | 84 min | Using transcripts, unexplored archival materials, and combines reenactments this documentary discuss the politics, implications and legacy of the first international conference on Africa. | 2010 |
| Black American Experience: Famous Writers Chester Himes and Ralph Ellison | DVD | 40 min | Chester Himes was an acclaimed African-American writer who created a violent and cynical picture of the "Black Experience" in America in his writings. Ralph Ellison was an African-American writer and essayist, whose only novel "Invisible Man" (1953) gained a wide critical success. | 2009 |
| Black Gold | DVD | 77 min | The film traces the tangled trail from the two billion cups of coffee consumed each day back to the coffee farmers who produce the beans. | 2006 |
| Blacking Up: Hip-Hop's Remix of Race and Identity | DVD | 57 min (two copies) | This ambitious and hard-hitting documentary looks at the popularity of hip-hop among America’s white youth. | 2010 |
| Blacks and Jews | DVD | 85 min | A film made collaboratively by Jewish and Black filmmakers, try to heal the misunderstanding and mistrust between Blacks and Jews. | 1997 |
| Boycott | DVD | 112 min | Made-for-TV movie that dramatizes the events of the Montgomery bus boycott, depicting the public and private dramas involved in the protests. | 2001 |
| Boyz In The Hood | DVD | 112 min | John Singleton's portrayal of social problems in inner-city Los Angeles takes the form of a tale of three friends growing up together "in the 'hood. | 1991 |
| Community Voices: Exploring Cross-Cultural Care Through Cancer | DVD | 69 min | This feature uses cancer to explore the ways that differences in culture, race and ethnicity affect health and the delivery of health-care services. | 2001 |
| Cracking the Code: The System of Racial Inequity | DVD | 75 min | Features moving stories from racial justice leaders. | 2012 |
Discounted Dreams: High Hopes and Harsh Realities at America's Community Colleges | DVD | 60 min. | Community Colleges represent the fastest growing segment of American higher education; their open admissions, low tuition and flexible scheduling draw students from all walks of life. They are the gateway to the American dream for millions. Vital yet flawed. Huge but virtually invisible. Government generally spends five times as much on prison inmates as it does on community colleges. Resolving these issues is essential for the American future. | 2007 |
| Do the Right Thing | DVD | 120 min | It's the hottest day of the summer. You can do nothing, you can do something, or you can...Do the Right Thing. The controversial story centers around one scorching inner-city day, when racial tensions reach the boiling point in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood. | 1989 |
| The Elder Project | DVD | 130 min | "The Elder Project" provides a much-needed tool for professionals who deal with seniors in many different settings. | 2010 |
| Everyone's Child | DVD | 90 min | The story of four siblings whose parents both died of AIDS. | 1996 |
Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (Season 1) | DVD | 360 min. (3 Discs) | The Emmy Award-winning landmark civil rights series, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, produced by Blackside, tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. | 2009 |
| Ezra | DVD | 110 min | The first film to give an African perspective on the disturbing phenomenon of abducting child soldiers into the continent’s recent civil wars. | 2007 |
| February One | 57 min 37 min (abbrev) | The inspiring story of four young men who initiated the lunch counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960. | 2004 | |
| Forgiveness | DVD | 118 min | Our unresolved relation to the past, not about forgetting it but forgiving it, so we can finally let go of it and move on into the future. | 2005 |
| Forgotten Fires | DVD | 57 min | Film that goes behind news headlines and examines the historical, economic and social contexts to the church burnings in the 1990s | 1999 |
| Free Angela & All Political Prisoners | DVD | 102 min. | This film centered on the struggle of educator and activist Angela Davis, an outspoken UCLA professor whose affiliation with the Communist Party and the Black Panthers landed her on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list | 2013 |
| Freedom Riders | DVD | 120 min | A band of college students traveling on a Greyhound bus for the South, managed to bring the president and American face to face with the challenge of correcting civil-rights inequalities. | 2011 |
| Fruitvale Station | DVD | 85 min. | Fruitvale Station is about the tragic shooting of Oscar Grant, a vibrant 22-year-old Bay Area father who was senselessly gunned down by BART officers on New Year's Day in 2009. | 2013 |
| Genocide & Resistance in Africa and the Diaspora: “A Campaign for Life: Struggle Against Anti-Black Genocide in Brazil”. Christen Smith Keynote Speech | DVD | Keynote speaker Dr. Christen Smith from the University of Austin delivers a powerful speech about genocidal institutions and social systems within Brazil. | ||
| Ghosts of Rwanda | DVD | 120 min | This film offers firsthand accounts of the genocide (a state-sponsored massacre in which 800,000 Rwandans were murdered by Hutu extremists). | 2004 |
| Glory | DVD | 124 min | About the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an all-Black unit comprised of Northern freemen and escaped slaves. | 1989 |
| 'Goin' to Chicago | DVD | 71 min | Recount of the development of segregated urban northern neighborhoods through personal stories of Chicagoans born in the Mississippi Delta. | 1994 |
| Guess Who's Coming to Dinner | DVD | 85 min. | A film that contains a (then rare) positive representation of the controversial subject of interracial marriage, which historically had been illegal in most states of the United States, and still was illegal in 17 states at the time. | 1967 |
| Have You Heard from Johannesburg | DVD | 89 min | Apartheid shows how a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience, campus protest and legislative action, spearheaded by African-American leaders. | 2007 |
| Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness | DVD | 57 min | A film on the life and career of Melville J. Herskovits (1895–1963), the pioneering American anthropologist of African Studies . | 2009 |
| Hidden Colors #1: The Untold History of People of Aboriginal, Moor, and African Descent | DVD | 109 min | This film discusses some of the reasons the contributions of African and aboriginal people have been left out of the pages of history. | 2011 |
| Hidden Colors #2: The Triumph of Melanin | DVD | 150 min | The follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2011 documentary about the untold history of people of African and aboriginal descent. | 2012 |
| The House I Live In | DVD | 109 min. | This documentary explores the risks that prohibition poses to freedom, and the tragedy of addicts being treated as criminals. | 2012 |
| Hoxie: The First Stand | DVD | 56 min | Hoxie sparked the first deployment of federal agents in support of integration and the first court order overturning state segregation laws. | 2003 |
| ICYIZERE:hope | DVD | 55 min | A documentary about a reconciliation workshop in Rwanda that brings together 10 survivors and 10 perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. | 2009 |
| The Intolerable Burden | DVD | 56 min | One family's commitment to obtaining a quality education in context, by examining the conditions of segregation prior to 1965. | 2003 |
| The Language You Cry In | DVD | 52 min | Scholarly detective story that searches for—and finds—meaningful links between African-Americans and their ancestral past. | 1998 |
Life and Times of Sara Baartman: The Hottentot Venus | DVD | 52 min. | THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SARA BAARTMAN is the fascinating story of this Khoi Khoi woman who was taken from South Africa, and then exhibited as a freak across Britain. The image and idea of "The Hottentot Venus" swept through British popular culture. A court battle waged by abolitionists to free her from her exhibitors failed. In 1814 she was taken to France, and became the object of scientific and medical research that formed the bedrock of European ideas about black female sexuality. She died the next year. But even after her death, Sara Baartman remained an object of imperialist scientific investigation. In the name of Science, her sexual organs and brain were displayed in the Musee de l'Homme in Paris until as recently as 1985. | 1998 |
| The Losts Boys of Sudan | DVD | 87 min | Documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America. | 2003 |
| The Loving Story | DVD | 77 min | A racially charged criminal trial and a heart-rending love story about Richard and Mildred Loving, set during the turbulent Civil Rights era. | 2001 |
| Malcolm X | DVD | 201 min | Biography, directed by Spike Lee, of Malcolm X, the famous African-American leader. | 1992 |
| Mandingo | DVD | 127 min | A shocking look at plantation life in the Deep South. Mandingo plays out its savage and dramatic story. | 1975 |
| The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry | DVD | 56 min | Documentary on the formation and battlefield heroics of the first all-Black Union regiment, the Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry. | 1991 |
| Motherland | DVD | 124 min | Documentary with a distinctive African voice. Fusing history, culture, politics, and contemporary issues. | 2010 |
| Mumia - Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal | DVD | 120 min. | This documentary is an inspiring portrait of a man whom many consider America's most famous political prisoner - a man whose existence tests our beliefs about freedom of expression. | 2013 |
| The Neo-African-Americans | DVD | 63 min | This documentary how rapid, voluntary emigration from Africa and the Caribbean is transforming the "African-American" narrative. | 2008 |
| New Jack City | DVD | 101 min | An unflinching, socially conscious look at the rise and fall of a powerful New York drug lord and a doomed crack addict. | 1991 |
| Of Ebony Embers: Vignettes of the Harlem Renaissance | DVD | 9 min | A celebration of the lives of the African-American poets, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen and Claude McKay through the eyes Aaron Douglas. | |
| A Place at the Table | DVD | 84 min. | "A Place at the Table" take us into the lives of three people who wage a daily struggle against hunger, and speak with various experts about the possibility of ensuring that every American is well fed. | 2012 |
A Place Out of Time: The Bordentown School | DVD | 57 min. | The little-known story of the last all black, publicly funded, co-educational boarding school North of the Mason-Dixon Line. In a segregated society, The Bordentown School was an educational utopia and cultural oasis for black citizens in the Northeast and beyond. Forced to close in 1955 after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the story of Bordentown is also the story of black education in America, across three centuries. | 2010 |
The Powerbroker: Whitney Young's Fight for Civil Rights | DVD | 60 min. | The Powerbroker tells the story of Whitney Young, who biographer Nancy Weiss Malkiel called 'the inside man of the black revolution.' By challenging America's business and political communities directly, Young was able to make in-roads where other civil rights leader could not. The Powerbroker chronicles the public and private trials of a man navigating a divided society in an explosive time. | 2013 |
Prince Among Slaves | DVD | 60 min. | In 1788, the slave ship Africa set sail towards America, with precious cargo: hundreds of men, women, and children. Eight months later, a handful of survivors were for sale in Mississippi. One of them, 26-year-old Abdul Rahman, made an amazing claim: he was a prince of an African kingdom. Prince Among Slaves is the true story of an African Prince, who endured the humiliation of slavery without ever losing his dignity or hope for freedom. | 2007 |
| Quilombo | DVD | 114 min | Palmares, a 17th-century quilombo, a settlement of escaped slaves in northeast Brazil. In 1650, slaves revolted and headed for the mountains where they found the aged seer, Acotirene. | 1984 |
| Rabbit-Proof Fence | DVD | 93 min | A young black Australian girl who leads her younger sister and cousin in an escape from an official government camp. | 2011 |
| Race 2012 | DVD | 60 min | "Race 2012" uses the current presidential election as a lens through which to view America's racial landscape. | 2012 |
| The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow | DVD | Four episodes (56 min each) | The first comprehensive look at race relations in America from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. | 2002 |
| Roots | DVD | Six epidodes | A saga of African-American life, based on author Alex Haley's family history. | 1977 |
| Rosewood | DVD | 142 min | In 1922 in the nearly all-Black town of Rosewood, Florida, an estimated 40 to 150 Blacks were killed by an all-white lynch mob from Sumner. | 1997 |
| Scottsboro: An American Tragedy | DVD | 90 min | In 1931, two white women make a shocking accusation: they had been raped by nine Black teenagers on the train. | 2001 |
| Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire | DVD | 91 min | More than 800,000 people were massacred in Rwanda. Canadian General Roméo Dallaire was charged to head the UN peacekeeping mission. | 2005 |
| Son of Africa | DVD | 28 min | The Interesting Narration of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African" was the first influential slave autobiography. | 1996 |
| To Sir, with Love | DVD | 105 min. | A novice teacher faces a class of rowdy, undisciplined working-class punks in this classic film that reflected some of the problems and fears of teens in the 60s. | 1967 |
| Tour of Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle and Other Attractions | DVD | A guided video tour of Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle, Kakum Canopy Walkway, Ostrich Farm and Hans Crocodile Pond—attractions in Ghana. | ||
| Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North | DVD | 86 min (51 min abridged version) | Katrina Browne uncovers her family's deep involvement in the Triangle Trade and reveals the role slavery played in the American economy. | 2008 |
| Two Nations of Black America | DVD | 60 min | Explores the gaping chasm between the upper and lower classes of Black America and probes why it has happened. | 1998 |
| Unchained Memories | DVD | 75 min | Readings from the Slave Narratives of black actors and actresses verbally re-creating those who lived under the yoke of slavery. | 2003 |
| Underground Railroad | DVD | 150 min | A documentary that unveils the history, heroes, and villains of the abolitionist movement. | 1998 |
| Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?" | DVD | Seven episodes (One 56-minute episode; six 26-minute episodes) | "Unnatural Causes" sounds the alarm about the extent of the glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their root causes. | 2008 |
| The Untold Story of Emmett Till | DVD | 70 min | The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" articulates the madness of racism in the South in the 1950s. | 2005 |
| W. E. B. Dubois: A Biography in Four Voices | DVD | 116 min. | The long and remarkable life of Dr. William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B) Du Bois (1868-1963) offers unique insights into an eventful century in African American history. | 1995 |
| Waiting for Superman | DVD | 111 min | Davis Guggenheim undertakes an exhaustive review of public education, surveying "drop-out factories" and "academic sinkholes," dissecting the system and its seemingly intractable problems. | 2010 |
| Why do Scientist Cheat? | VHS |