Do films have the power to change the world?
While we believe so, it’s hard to say that definitively when we continue to see injustices against our fellow Americans being committed. Supporting black communities can be done in many ways and since Cinemacy is a film community designed to champion independent filmmaking and voices, we’d like to take this moment to highlight 10 powerful films directed by African American filmmakers.
Watch their films. Learn their stories. Amplify their voices. Change the current narrative so that we can one day say, definitively, that films had the power to change the world.
An Education on Being Black in America in 10 Films:
1) 12 Years a Slave | dir. Steve McQueen | Available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, and other VOD platforms.
In the years before the Civil War, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Subjected to the cruelty of one malevolent owner (Michael Fassbender), he also finds unexpected kindness from another, as he struggles continually to survive and maintain some of his dignity. Then in the 12th year of the disheartening ordeal, a chance meeting with an abolitionist from Canada changes Solomon’s life forever.
2) Do the Right Thing | dir. Spike Lee | Available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, and other VOD platforms.
Salvatore “Sal” Fragione (Danny Aiello) is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin’ Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin’ Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
3) Fruitvale Station | dir. Ryan Coogler | Available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, and other VOD platforms.
Based on a true story. Though he once spent time in San Quentin, 22-year-old black man Oscar Grant (Michael B Jordan) is now trying hard to live a clean life and support his girlfriend and young daughter. Flashbacks reveal the last day in Oscar’s life, in which he accompanied his family and friends to San Francisco to watch fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and, on the way back home, became swept up in an altercation with police that ended in tragedy.
4) Get Out | dir. Jordan Peele | Available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, and other VOD platforms.
Now that Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway upstate with Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
5) Hale County This Morning, This Evening | dir. RaMell Ross | Streaming on Amazon, available to rent on VOD platforms.
Intimate and personal moments from the lives of the black community of Hale County, Alabama, forming an emotive impression of the historic South and consequences of racism while upholding the beauty of life.
6) I Am Not Your Negro | dir. Raoul Peck | Streaming on Amazon, available to rent on VOD platforms.
In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, “Remember This House.” The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin’s death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished.
7) If Beale Street Could Talk | dir. Barry Jenkins | Streaming on Hulu, available to rent on VOD platforms.
In early 1970s Harlem, daughter and wife-to-be Tish (KiKi Layne) vividly recalls the passion, respect, and trust that have connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt (Stephan James), who goes by the nickname Fonny. Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together, but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit.
8) Monsters and Men | dir. Reinaldo Marcus Green | Streaming on Hulu, available to rent on VOD platforms.
The aftermath of a police killing of a black man, told through the eyes of the bystander who filmed the act, an African-American police officer and a high-school baseball phenom inspired to take a stand.
9) Selma | dir. Ava DuVernay | Available to rent on Amazon, iTunes, and other VOD platforms.
Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally desegregated the South, discrimination was still rampant in certain areas, making it very difficult for blacks to register to vote. In 1965, an Alabama city became the battleground in the fight for suffrage. Despite violent opposition, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his followers pressed forward on an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, and their efforts culminated in President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
10) Sorry To Bother You | dir. Boots Riley | Streaming on Hulu, available to rent on VOD platforms.
In an alternate reality of present-day Oakland, Calif., telemarketer Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) finds himself in a macabre universe after he discovers a magical key that leads to material glory. As Green’s career begins to take off, his friends and co-workers organize a protest against corporate oppression. Cassius soon falls under the spell of Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), a cocaine-snorting CEO who offers him a salary beyond his wildest dreams.
