Subject Guides: Communicating Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism: Film Studies and Race

Nonfiction Films through Fogler Library

4 Little Girls
This HBO documentary examines the events surrounding the 1963 bombing of an African American Baptist Church in Alabama, which resulted in the deaths of four young girls. "When a bomb tears through the basement of a black Baptist church on a peaceful fall morning, it takes the lives of four young girls; Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins. This racially motivated crime, taking place at a time when the civil rights movement is burning with a new flame, could have doused that flame forever. Instead it fuels a nation's outrage and brings Birmingham, Alabama to the forefront of America's concern."
America after Ferguson
This PBS town hall meeting, moderated by PBS NEWSHOUR co-anchor and managing editor Gwen Ifill, explores events following Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri. The program, recorded before an audience on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, includes national leaders and prominent thinkers in the areas of law enforcement, race and civil rights, as well as government officials, faith leaders and youth.
America to Me
Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself) examines racial, economic and class issues in contemporary American education in the multipart unscripted documentary series “America to Me.”
Black Power: America's Armed Resistance
This follow up documentary to KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy sees filmmaker Dan Murdoch back in the USA to revisit some of the people he met from the Ku Klux Klan and also meet members of the Black Liberation Movement. Having previously documented clashes between these two opposing visions of Americaa resurgent KKK and a growing Black Power movementhis aim now is to find out what black power means, what its motivations are and why this movement seems to be gaining traction. With rare access to members of the Black Liberation Movement, Murdoch quickly finds himself in the midst of an armed black militia, outraged at the treatment of black people at the hands of police, patrolling the streets of their communities and calling for change.
Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin
A documentary examining the life of Bayard Rustin, one of the first "freedom riders," an adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, and an organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. However, Rustin was forced to play a background role in landmark civil rights events because he was gay. This feature-length portrait unfolds both chronologically and thematically, using interviews with others, and Rustin's own voice, taken from his writings, papers, correspondence, and recorded interviews.
Good Americans
This series traces the story of Asian Americans, spanning 150 years of immigration, racial politics, and cultural innovation. It is a timely look at the role that Asian Americans have played in defining who we are as a nation.
James Baldwin: Speech on Civil Rights
This video is a film of James Baldwin giving a speech on civil rights to a group of students in London in 1968.
Land of Opportunity
Through the eyes of urban planners, community organizers, displaced youth, immigrant workers, and public housing residents, this verité-style documentary reveals how the story of New Orleans is the story of urban America: how democratic processes can fail us, how economic crisis can pull the rug out from under us, and how (im)migration can prove to be a complicated bargain.
A New Color
This film joyfully profiles the life and work of celebrated artist Edythe Boone whose colorful murals portray some of the major events of our time and illustrate the transformative power of art. Long before Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry, septuagenarian Boone embodied that truth as an accomplished artist and educator. From humble Harlem roots, the indefatigable Boone pursued her love of art and her dream of someday creating a new color – "a color that no one had ever seen before." Woven throughout the film is the personal journey that fuels Boone’s art, having lived through segregation and the Civil Rights movement, as well as the more recent tragedies of Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and the chokehold death of her nephew Eric Garner, whose final words – "I Can’t Breathe" – ignited national outrage over racist policing. Filmed over five years, A New Color illuminates how the passionate, heart-felt work of one resilient woman can reverberate throughout a community and inspire both art and a more powerful chorus for justice.
Race: The Power of an Illusion
This...series is an eye-opening tale of how what we assume to be normal, commonsense, even scientific, is actually shaped by our history, social institutions and cultural beliefs.

Find more documentaries and nonfiction series in Academic Video Online!

Additional Resources

Hollywood Diversity Report 2020
From UCLA, this is the seventh in a series of annual reports to examine relationships between diversity and the bottom line in the Hollywood entertainment industry. It considers the top 200 theatrical film releases in 2018 and 2019, ranked by global box office, in order to document the degree to which women and people of color are present in front of and behind the camera. It discusses any patterns between these findings and box office receipts by key audience demographics. The report also charts any trends that may reveal the degree to which the industry is progressing on the diversity front over time.

Film Critiques

Podcast Episodes

Identity Politics Podcast, Episode 43: Movie Trivia With Nijla Mu'min

"Nijla Baseema Mu’min is an award-winning writer and filmmaker from the East Bay Area. Her work is informed by poetry, photography, fiction, and dance. Named one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2017, she tells stories about black girls and women who find themselves between worlds and identities. Her debut feature film, Jinn, won the award for Best Screenplay at the 2018 American Black Film Festival and was acquired by Orion Classics."

Cinema Junkie Podcast 197: Black Films That Matter

"David F. Walker (writer of "Shaft" and "Luke Cage" comics, and graphic novels on Frederick Douglass and The Black Panther Party) picks some Black films that matter to provide context for today's protests."

Relevant Scholarship

Below are relevant databases for finding scholarly journal articles related to race or racism and film or cinema. Journal articles are written by experts in their fields. In many library databases you can click a "peer reviewed" or "scholarly article" box to produce a list of references to these types of articles.

Academic Search Complete Multi-disciplinary database of literature from many subject areas; can limit to peer reviewed articles. Example articles include:

Whiteness and the Postracial Imaginary in Disney's Zootopia
Anti-Racism and Anti-Colonialism in Canada: Identifying Key Components of Critical Pedagogy in Film
Representing ‘otherness’ in African popular media: Chinese characters in Ethiopian video-films

Communication & Mass Media Complete Literature in communication, journalism, and media studies; can limit to peer reviewed articles. Example articles include:

White Innocence and Black Subservience: The Rhetoric of White Heroism in The Help
Not Just a Joke: Tina Fey, Amy Schumer, and the Weak Reflexivity of White Feminist Comedy
"Afrotopia?": an Afrofuturist examination of Chad Hartigan's film Morris from America

JSTOR Digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Example articles include:

Black and White on the Silver Screen: Views of Interracial Romance in French Films and Reviews since the 1980s
The Alien Within: Divergent Futures in Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon and Neill Blomkamp's District 9
From Yorùbá to YouTube: Studying Nollywood's Star System