American Promise

American Promise 2013

6.70

In 1999, filmmakers Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson turned the camera on themselves and began filming their five-year-old son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, as they started kindergarten at the prestigious Dalton School just as the private institution was committing to diversify its student body. Their cameras continued to follow both families for another 12 years as the paths of the two boys diverged—one continued private school while the other pursued a very different route through the public education system.

2013

Stateless

Stateless 2020

5.00

Director Michèle Stephenson’s new documentary follows families of those affected by the 2013 legislation stripping citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent, uncovering the complex history and present-day politics of Haiti and the Dominican Republic through the grassroots electoral campaign of a young attorney named Rosa Iris.

2020

Slaying Goliath

Slaying Goliath 2008

1

SLAYING GOLIATH takes an unprecedented intimate look at the world of amateur youth basketball through the eyes of the New York Select Huskies team as they seek to win the AAU National Basketball Championship. The grueling price the team must pay to win exposes the hidden dark side of amateur sports.

2008

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project 2023

7.10

Intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of poetry take us on a journey through the dreamscape of legendary queer poet Nikki Giovanni as she reflects on her life and legacy.

2023

The Changing Same - Episode 1: The Dilemma

The Changing Same - Episode 1: The Dilemma 2021

1

The Changing Same is a magical realist, immersive, episodic virtual reality experience where the participant travels through time and space to witness the connected historical experiences of racial injustice in America.

2021

For Our Girls

For Our Girls 2021

1

Black women have played critical roles in all areas of the social justice movement but are often denied the platform they deserve. For Our Girls is a remix of the 2015 New York Times Op-Doc“ A CONVERSATION WITH BLACK WOMEN ON RACE.” It explores the stigmas Black girls face as they grow up within and outside their community. Working with the original interviews and reflections in 2020, mothers share their concerns with how they are shaping and impacting their daughters’ independence. The film is a love letter to Black daughter.

2021

Learning to Breathe

Learning to Breathe 2021

1

The lives of these young men are compared and contrasted with who they were five years ago, about who they are now, and how their perspectives on race, justice, and social inequality have changed.

2021

Elena

Elena 2021

1

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Elena, the young protagonist of the film, and her family stand to lose their legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don't manage to get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society around, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers.

2021

The Changing Same

The Changing Same 2018

1

Eighty years after the lynching of Claude Neal, Florida's last spectacle killing, his ghost arises from the grave and we are all better off for it. In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where one native resident runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history.

2018

Cuscú

Cuscú 2021

1

"Why do I want to straighten my hair? Why have they made me believe that we should straighten our hair? These simple questions sparked a research that is now a counter-memory to the Panamanian history that has gone unquestioned for so long. This counter-memory was built by the hands of multiple Black women, friends who have found themselves in a similar situation."

2021