African American Culture Films

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From Mambo to Hip Hop

From Mambo to Hip Hop

From Mambo to Hip Hop

From Mambo to Hip-Hop dances through the history of a borough that nurtured two musical movements: the mambo that evolved into salsa, and the hip-hop that arose from the most…

Sonny Terry: Shoutin' the Blues

Sonny Terry: Shoutin' the Blues

Sonny Terry: Shoutin' the Blues

Shot in 1969, SHOUTIN' THE BLUES is a one shot, one story and one song short film of harmonica great, Sonny Terry. Seated in a motel room on Broadway in Oakland, California where…

Free Show Tonite

Free Show Tonite

Free Show Tonite

Presents a nostalgic tribute to the American medicine shows of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shows a re-creation of a typical medicine show by veteran performers,…

Toot Blues

2009 | 1h 14mins

2009 | 1h 14mins

Wall to wall blues from unheralded artists. The film gives a glimpse of what is being lost and Tim Duffy's heroic efforts to document the passing.

Chairman Jones: An Improbable Leader

Chairman Jones: An Improbable Leader

Chairman Jones: An Improbable Leader

Chairman Jones tells the story of James H. Jones through the eyes of his daughter, filmmaker Anna Jones. A farmer who freed himself from sharecropping in the 1950s, Jones became a…

We Are Arabbers

We Are Arabbers

2004 | 1h 21mins

We Are Arabbers

2004 | 1h 21mins

We Are Arabbers follows the horse-and-wagon produce vendors along the streets of Baltimore, Maryland as they struggle to make a living and maintain their unique culture.

Family Across the Sea

Family Across the Sea

Family Across the Sea

Family Across the Sea shows how scholars have uncovered the remarkable connections between the Gullah people of South Carolina and the people of Sierra Leone.

Everything Change Up Now

Everything Change Up Now

Everything Change Up Now

This documentary explores what has happened to lifestyles of South Carolina sea slanders since slavery, through interviews with Gullah basket weavers, net makers, fishermen,…

Hush Hoggies Hush

Hush Hoggies Hush

Hush Hoggies Hush

Meet Tom Johnson and his praying pigs. "Been fooling with them hogs for 35 long years," Johnson says in the film as he rocks on the porch of his modest residence near Bentonia,…

In the Rapture

A religious drama staged by members of the Second Baptist Church in Bloomington, Indiana. Made by the late folklorist William Wiggins. The original negative for this 16mm film is…

Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison

Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison

Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison

Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by…

Land Where the Blues Began

Land Where the Blues Began

Land Where the Blues Began

In the late 1970s Alan Lomax traveled to Mississippi with filmmaker John Bishop and folklorist Worth Long and made this film about the African American music he found there.

Other Side of Eden trailer

Other Side of Eden trailer

Other Side of Eden trailer

On a hot July night in 1932 a black tenant farmer in Northern Virginia slipped into his landowner’s home “Edenhurst,” beat him unconscious with a piece of stove wood, and dragged…

Pizza Pizza Daddy-O

Pizza Pizza Daddy-O

Pizza Pizza Daddy-O

PIZZA PIZZA DADDY-O (1967) looks at continuity and change in girl's playground games at a Los Angeles school.

When My Work Is Over

When My Work Is Over

When My Work Is Over

The gifted African American storyteller Louise Anderson (1921-1994) tells her family stories and folk tales, and recites poetry in this film taped in Jacksonville, North Carolina,…

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