African-American
see all genres ›Black audiences were usually segregated into their own seating sections of mainstream movie houses for decades (when they were allowed at all) but they also had low-budget films produced exclusively for "black" cinemas from the silent era until the dawn of the civil rights era. The latter eventually brought black subjects and actors to all audiences, sparking both the 1970s "blaxploitation" boom and the ascendancy of African American-themed films of the present.
Watch African-American Films
Genres / Drama / Ethnicity / African-American
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The Watermelon Woman
Cheryl Dunye's debut feature is as controversial as it is sexy and funny. Cheryl is a twenty-something black lesbian working as a clerk in a video store while struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, an obscure black actress from the 1930's. Cheryl is surprised to...Watch Movie
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Of Mind and Music
A lyrical and extraordinarily beautiful story woven together by the music that permeates New Orleans and the jazz that made it famous. Renowned Neuroscientist Dr. Alvaro Cruz returns home from a lecture in Paris, heartbroken and disillusioned. In his absence, his mother has...Watch Movie
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Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG is the story of a young hustler whose aimless pleasure seeking turns to radicalism after witnessing the beating of a black revolutionary by two white cops. Sweetback, driven to a state of blind rage, takes brutal revenge on the cops, forcing...Watch Movie
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The Cry of Jazz
Filmed in Chicago and finished in 1959, THE CRY OF JAZZ is filmmaker, composer and arranger Edward O. Bland's polemical essay on the politics of music and race: a forecast of what he called "the death of jazz." A landmark moment in black film, foreseeing the civil unrest of subsequent decades, it...Watch Movie
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Mother of George
Adenike and Ayodele are a Nigerian couple living in Brooklyn. Following the joyous celebration of the their wedding, complications arise out of their inability to conceive a child - a problem that devastates their family and defies cultural expectations, leading Adenike to...Watch Movie
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My Brother's Wedding
Pierce Mundy works at his parents' South Central dry cleaners with no prospects for the future and his childhood buddies are in prison or dead. With his best friend just getting out of jail and his brother busy planning a wedding to a snooty upper-middle-class black woman,...Watch Movie
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Black Shampoo
John Daniels stars as Jonathan Knight, the owner of the most successful hair salon for women on the Sunset Strip. Jonathan is tall, muscular, black and ballsy. His reputation as a lover has become so awesome that he is sought after almost as much in that capacity as in his experience as a hair...Watch Movie
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The Bad Bunch
Violence and racial tension punctuate this fast moving study of prejudice and discrimination. THE BAD BUNCH is the story of a black gang who run the streets of Watts. It is also the story of Jim (played by director/screenwriter Greydon Clark), a white man who tries to befriend them. Prejudice...Watch Movie
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I Passed for White
A beautiful young woman meets and marries the man of her dreams, only she hasn't told him that she is half-black, and he and his rich family and friends are white. She soon discovers that happiness cannot be founded on a lie. Please excuse the poor source quality of this film.Watch Movie
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Black Like Me
Based on the landmark memoir by John Howard Griffin, BLACK LIKE ME stars James Whitmore as Griffin, who medically altered his pigment and, with the help of a sunlamp, reinvented himself as an itinerant black writer navigating his way through Mississippi and Alabama. Along the way he experienced...Watch Movie
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Welcome to Pine Hill
WELCOME TO PINE HILL is an extension of Miller’s earlier short film PRINCE/WILLIAM about an unexpected encounter surrounding a lost dog. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction, PINE HILL follows that short’s protagonist Shannon, a reformed drug dealer who is now an...Watch Movie
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Almos' a Man
Although Dave (LeVar Burton) and his family are poor sharecroppers in the Deep South in the 1930's, this 15-year-olds problem is shared by teenagers today: he stands with one foot in adulthood and the other in childhood. Almost a man, yet still treated like a child, he struggles for an identity....Watch Movie
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Vengeance Is Mine
A young man goes back to his hometown, a very rough neighborhood with even rougher residents. He sets out to demonstrate that, with the love and belief in the Lord, people can change for the better. This 1971 film stars Booker Bradshaw, Gloria Calomee and Vince Howard. It was...Watch Movie
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The Broken Mask
A young white collegian and a fellow black student struggling for understanding come to realize that living together harmoniously is a two-way street. This film about racial relationships points out that no matter what the color of the skin, God created man to share one blood. The film's story...Watch Movie
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The Sky is Gray
From Ernest J. Gaines, author of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”, comes a deceptively simple, yet emotionally complex tale of a young boy's discovery of what it's like to be black in Louisiana during the 1940's. James, the boy in question, has a raging toothache that necessitates a trip...Watch Movie
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Forged Ways
Photographed on-location, FORGED WAYS combines elements of documentary, narrative and experimental film form. Structurally the film cycles between the first person account of filmmaker, the third person experience of a man navigating the streets of Harlem and day-to-day life in cities and...Watch Movie
