Your BHM Picks: Videos & Media
Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space
About this video: Directed by Tracy Heather Strain, produced by Randall MacLowry and executive produced by Cameo George, Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century. Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore.
Queen Bess
About this video: Director Sheldon Candis created Queen Bess as the allegory ascension of the first female African American aviatrix. Based on the true story of Bessie Coleman, the daredevil aerodynamic queen of the sky.
GOLD TOKEN
About this video: Directed by EWURAKUA DAWSON- AMOAH, Gold Token is a poem in live action inspired by the surge of activism that emerged from the death of George Floyd in 2020. While much energy and many works of art have sought to contribute to a growing awareness of concepts like police brutality and systemic racism, Dawson-Amoah found herself conflicted by much of what she saw. The nominal success of the movement to present these issues and shift them to the forefront of mainstream attention contained a dispiriting element of faddishness. The hashtags, the black-out squares, the merchandising all struck Dawson-Amoah as disingenuous—the co-option of Black pain to personal and corporate virtue-signaling absent a deeper moral commitment. The pandemic left people cooped up with nothing to do so they became social media activists. How long would that last? Gold Token emerged as an attempt to deal with these feelings. As she describes, “I wanted to take my frustrations and compile them into something I could process creatively, in hopes that viewers could process it too.”
A Concerto is a Conversation
About this video: Kris Bowers is one of Hollywood’s rising young composers. At 29, he scored the Oscar-winning film “Green Book” (2018), and this year he premiered a new violin concerto, “For a Younger Self,” at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. For all that success, though, he says that as a Black composer, “I’ve been wondering whether or not I’m supposed to be in the spaces that I’m in.” In Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers's "A Concerto Is a Conversation," Bowers traces the process of breaking into new spaces through generations of sacrifice that came before him, focusing on the story of his grandfather Horace Bowers. As a young man, he left his home in the Jim Crow South, eventually ending up in Los Angeles. Encountering discrimination at every turn, he and his wife, Alice, nevertheless made a life as business owners. Today, their legacy lives on through their family and community in South Los Angeles, where a stretch of Central Avenue was recently designated Bowers Retail Square — in case any question remained about whether it’s a place they belong.
Mahalia Melts in the Rain
About this video: With all the girls in her ballet class excited for an upcoming photoshoot Mahalia, the only black girl in the group, starts to feel self-conscious about her hair, so her mother sees this as the perfect opportunity to take her to a salon for the first time. In Mahalia Melts in the Rain co-directors Emilie Mannering and Carmine Pierre-Dufour use this simple scenario to create a double coming of age narrative, as we follow the short’s nine-year-old protagonist as she begins to notice how she is different to the other girls in the class (a predominantly white environment) and her mother takes her on a rite of passage experience.
Comedian Nicole Byer Is ‘Finding it Hard To Be Funny’ Amid Black Lives Matter...
Suggested by Karen Knotts, she/hers
About this Video: Comedian Nicole Byer gets candid about racism and police brutality. Length: 2:43
The Story of a Child Who Marched With MLK at Selma Is Coming to the Stage
Suggested by Theresa Lorch, she/her
About this Video: Lynda Blackmon Lowery signed up with lots of other children to participate in three non-violent marches along U.S. Route 80 in March of 1965. She was 14-and-a-half years old, and tells the story in her book, Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom. Length: 3:49
A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
Suggested by Dulce Salcedo Lopez, she/her/ella
About this Film: RAISIN IN THE SUN is a groundbreaking drama celebrating the human spirit, featuring an electrifying performance by Academy Award(r) winner Sidney Poitier (Best Actor, Lilies of the Field, 1963). The Younger family, frustrated with living in their crowded Chicago apartment, sees the arrival of a $10,000 insurance check as the answer to their prayers. Matriarch Lena Younger (Claudia McNeil) promptly puts a down payment on a house in an all-white suburban neighborhood. But the family is divided when Lena entrusts the balance of the money to her mercurial son Walter Lee (Poitier), against the wishes of her daughter (Diana Sands) and daughter-in-law (Ruby Dee). It takes the strength and integrity of this African-American family to battle against generations of prejudice to try to achieve theirpiece of the American Dream.
Wilmington on Fire
Suggested by: Hoover Zariani, he/him/his
About this Film: Rosewood has long been infamous, but Wilmington came first and was even more devastating in its effects. In 1898, Wilmington was North Carolina's largest city, with a majority black population, a thriving black middle class, and a biracial Republican-Populist fusion government. On November 10, an armed mob of Democrat-backed white supremacists opened fire on African American neighborhoods, slaughtering hundreds and driving thousands out of the city for good. In a five-year passion project that consumed all his resources, director Christopher Everett amassed rare photographs, original research, and testimonies from historians and descendants of the victims to uncover a shocking event that marked a turning point in the politics of the post-Reconstruction South.
James Baldwin & Nikki Giovanni, a conversation
About this video: Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation for the TV show SOUL! .Original video from SOUL! and then shoutfactorytv. All rights and love to Soul! and shoutfactorytv for broadcasting this. Taped in London, November 1971.
For more on Nikki Giovanni reflecting on this conversation in 2016 with Clint Smith: https://youtu.be/dI74bE0pqRM
James Baldwin Debates William Buckley, Jr.
About this video: Historic debate between James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University on the question: "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?"
Hair Love
Suggested by: Dulce Salcedo Lopez, she/her/ella
About this video: Hair Love, an Oscar®-winning animated short film from Matthew A. Cherry, tells the heartfelt story of an African American father learning to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.