theblackbottom

Source: LA Times
Thinking back on the 1992 L.A. riots, specific images come to mind: the grainy video of the Rodney King beating, burning buildings, and police and military on the streets. More fuzzy in the collective memory for many is the emotional and physical toll the mayhem took on the Korean American community [...]

Source: Shadow and the Act, IndieWire
FREE ANGELA is a work-in-progress feature-length documentary about Angela Davis and the high stakes crime, political movement, and trial that catapults the 26 year-old newly appointed philosophy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles into a seventies revolutionary political icon.
Nearly forty years later, and for the first time, [...]

The Root.com
By: Hillary Crosley
The Huffington Post reports that thanks to donations from fans, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee may have a documentary chronicling their lives soon. Promoting the project — called Life’s Essentials With Ruby Dee — through the fundraising website Kickstarter, Dee’s family will have a hand in telling the story of her and [...]

As a professional picture framer, I was puzzled by the title “Colored Frames: A Visual Art Documentary” when I first viewed it online. I wondered if this was a film about art and picture frames but was very surprised to learn that this was a new documentary about African American artists. Then I remembered [...]

New York Daily News REVIEW
LA Times REVIEW

Source: LA Times
“Undefeated” presents itself as a look at a single season in the life of a striving high school football team in impoverished North Memphis, Tenn., but really it’s about so much more.
Like all memorable sports documentaries — and this Oscar-nominated film is definitely one of those — “Undefeated” is [...]

Source: New York Times
Riffing on an unlikely nexus of black radicalism and white college students, the satirical newspaper The Onion once ran an item headlined “Bob Marley Rises From Grave to Free Frat Boys From Bonds of Oppression.”

By popularizing reggae internationally, Marley became the global ambassador for Rastafarians, a Jamaican spiritual movement [...]

By:Matthew Pillischer
www.BROKENONALLSIDES.com
Producer/Director/Editor, BROKEN ON ALL SIDES
A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT RACE, MASS INCARCERATION, AND NEW VISIONS FOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN THE U.S.
Broken On All Sides: Race, Mass Incarceration & New Visions for Criminal Justice in the U.S. is an hour-long independent documentary that explores the intersection of race and poverty within the criminal justice system. [...]

Lisa E. Farrington, Ph.D., is an accomplished curator, author, and art historian. She has earned numerous academic degrees, including a Ph.D. and Master of Philosophy degrees from the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, an M.A. in art history from American University, a B.F.A. magna cum laude from Howard University, and a Regents Degree [...]

Back in January we highlighted this new documentary with an interview with actor and activist Danny Glover on Democracy Now. Below you will find a link to some of the reviews.

Mark Jenkins, NPR: It probably never occurred to most students of the American black power movement that they should know more about the Swedish outlook [...]