African American Culture Films

"Amen!" explores the rich traditions, historical significance, and meaning of Black church music in a concert film, recorded before a live audience at the Second Baptist Church in…

A look at Cajun and Zydeco music that was started in Louisiana. Many artists are featured in the film.

Eleven groups in eight days. A marathon recording session in a makeshift storefront studio in a 100-year-old building in the tiny Eastern North Carolina town of Fountain. Once the…

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…

The story of a gifted African American family from the rural South. With interviews and stories, and scenes from daily life, reunions, gospel concerts, and church services, the…

Alan Lomax's wonderful documentary about the bayous of Louisiana which have combined French, German, West Indian, native American and hillbilly ingredients into a unique cultural…

During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was supposed to give sharecroppers a chance at land ownership. But for Black farmers in Tillery, North Carolina,…

George "Kid Shiek" Colar and the Olympia Brass Band are featured in this rare film about New Orleans Jazz, directed by Frank DeCola and photographed by Tom Davenport.

A film portrait of the last Black medicine-show performer, Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson, with harmonica songs, tales of hoboing, buckdances, and a live medicine-show performance.

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…

Seated in a motel room on Broadway in Oakland, California where he was filmed while on tour with Brownie McGhee, Sonny, with one small harmonica in his hand, creates a complex and…

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…

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,…

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.