As the calendar turns from January to February, so begins Black History Month. Dozens of great titles will become available on various streaming services that celebrate the cultural, political, and artistic contributions of Black Americans throughout the country's history.
2020 was a watershed moment for racial justice issues, and so 2021's Black History Month offers a new opportunity for audiences to explore films that pertain to this eternally relevant subject. In addition to narrative features, there's also a plethora of documentary titles to choose from that shed light on the Black experience and the struggle for equality.
13th
2016's 13th is the Oscar-nominated documentary from acclaimed director Ava DuVernay. The title refers to the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which outlawed slavery in 1865. In the film, she argues, as have many other racial justice activists, that mass incarceration of Black people is an extension of the same unjust racial dynamics responsible for slavery and Jim Crow.
Though politically charged, the film transcends partisan politics, as it features politicians from both major American political parties.
Soundtrack For A Revolution
Soundtrack For a Revolution premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It's a music documentary in which popular artists from today, such as The Roots, John Legend, and Joss Stone, perform contemporary renditions of Civil Rights-era protest songs.
The film won numerous awards in its prestigious festival run. It's currently available to stream on Amazon Prime and is well worth seeking out for music and history buffs alike.
4 Little Girls
Director One of his most powerful films in any genre is his documentary 4 Little Girls, which recounts the Birmingham Church bombing of 1963 which killed four young Black girls.
The film is more than just a touching eulogy for the victims. It's also an urgent and politically incisive reminder that despite some progress, racial harmony remains elusive to this day.
The Trials Of Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali won some tough fights in his life, but the hardest of them all was a legal battle to overturn his five-year prison sentence for refusing to fight in Vietnam. The film views his dissent through a racial and religious lens, as well as an anti-war perspective.
It's not only a well-executed retelling of Ali's many "trials" and tribulations, but it provides much in the way of the historical context which surrounded them.
The Newburgh Sting
The city of Newburgh, NY, sits on the Hudson River, 60 miles north of New York City. HBO's riveting documentary The Newburgh Sting tells the story of a famous arrest of four Black residents of Newburgh charged with plotting a domestic terrorist attack.
Through a compilation of video evidence, testimonials, and interviews, the filmmakers uncover a hidden part of the story: the FBI informant who recruited the men was more responsible for "planning" the attack than anyone else. The film argues quite convincingly that the men were entrapped and wrongfully imprisoned. The Newburgh Sting is a true story that plays more like a thriller than a documentary and it's one of 2010's most underrated films in its genre.
The Central Park Five
Ava DuVernay's dramatic depiction of the trial of the Central Park five released on Netflix in 2019. Seven years earlier, acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns and his daughter Sarah made a documentary on the same subject.
Five Black and Latino teenagers were wrongfully accused of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989. Four were abusively coerced into giving false confessions, and the five men served a combined 35 years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is an experimental documentary film by photographer RaMell Ross. It's an impressionistic and visually stimulating look into the lives of Black residents in the rural American South.
In an era when Black Lives Matter is a both hashtag and a rallying cry, this evocative film is an intimate look at the day-to-day reality of Black lives. Some audiences found it frustratingly slow-paced, but critics embraced the film wholeheartedly, hence its 97% Rotten Tomatoes score.
I Am Not Your Negro
The 2016 doc I Am Not Your Negro is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and is based on an unfinished manuscript of novelist James Baldwin called This House.
The book was intended to be a reflection on the lives and assassinations of three Civil Rights heroes, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers. Baldwin knew all three men personally, and so, as one would expect, the film is emotionally resonant in ways that are difficult to put into words.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
The 2011 film The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is a rare gem of a documentary that's sourced from 16mm footage shot four decades before its release by two Swedish filmmakers documenting the Black Power movement in the 60s and 70s.
Featuring archival footage of Civil Rights activists like Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and others, as well as voiceovers from some of today's premier Black artists, like Questlove and Talib Kweli, the film is both a blast from the past and an urgent contemporary work of art.
Whose Streets
2017's Whose Streets is a widely acclaimed documentary about the early days of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri, where protests erupted over the police killing of 18-year old, Mike Brown.
The film features footage from the protests as well as revealing interviews with those who participated in them and the global impact of their activism. Raw, ionate, and unflinching, Whose Streets is a must-see for those who want an up-close look at the BLM movement in action.
