While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence.
Rap Dixon was a legendary African American baseball player who played in what were known as the Negro Leagues. This film chronicles his life and baseball accomplishments while exploring how racism and segregation affect how people are remembered in history.
On August 1, 1942, a 22-year-old Mexican American man was stabbed to death at a party. To white Los Angelenos, the murder was just more proof that Mexican American crime was spiraling out of control. The police fanned out across LA, netting 600 young Mexican American suspects. Almost all those taken into custody were wearing the distinctive uniform of their generation: Zoot Suits. The tragic murder and the injustice of the trial that followed, coupled with sensational news coverage of both, fanned the flames of the racial hostility that was already running rife in the city. Within months of the verdict, Los Angeles was in the grip of some of the worst violence in its history.
Varosha, the only city on the world without people, the loneliest city... Varosha is a province in Cyprus that is closed with fences and unpopulated since 1974.
Never-before-seen testimony is included in this documentary on Emmett Louis Till, who, in 1955, was brutally murdered after he whistled at a white woman.
In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated... and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.
On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stepped up to a microphone in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Inscribed on the walls of the monument behind her were the words “all men are created equal.” Barred from performing in Constitution Hall because of her race, Anderson would sing for the American people in the open air. Hailed as a voice that “comes around once in a hundred years” by maestros in Europe and widely celebrated by both white and black audiences at home, her fame hadn’t been enough to spare her from the indignities and outright violence of racism and segregation.
Chicano is an exploration between the similarities and differences between Chicano culture in America and Japan, and how the scene is not all about gang culture, but has a deep-seated root in family values.
An in-depth and provocative look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots exploring the roots of civil unrest in California and the relationship between African Americans and LAPD.
Foreign Puzzle is an intimate documentary that captures the journey of an inspiring Mexican American dancer as she communicates the impermanence of life through dance while juggling the roles of a recently divorced parent of a 6-year-old, a choreographer and a primary school teacher amidst intensive treatments for breast cancer.
In THE COLOR OF FEAR, eight American men participated in emotionally charged discussions of racism. In this sequel, we hear and see more from those discussions, in which the men talk about about how racism has affected their lives in the United States. We also learn more about the relationships between them, and about their reactions during some of the most intense moments of that discussion.
Celebrated author and Nation magazine sports editor Dave Zirin tackles the myth that the NFL was somehow free of politics before Colin Kaepernick and other Black NFL players took a knee.
The Cold War and Civil Rights collide in this remarkable story of music, diplomacy and race. Beginning in 1955, when America asked its greatest jazz artists to travel the world as cultural ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and their mixed-race band members, faced a painful dilemma: how could they represent a country that still practiced Jim Crow segregation?
Can a tree be racist? A few years ago, debate on this issue reached as far as Fox News. The focus was a row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs, which screened off the neighborhood of Crossley Tract. This is a historically Black neighborhood, named after its founder Lawrence Crossley, who was one of the first Black residents to settle in the largely white tourist paradise, established on indigenous land over a century ago.
Exploring their 5-decade career performing stand-up, making records, and starring in hit films. It covers their lives, comedy partnership, and lasting influence on pop culture.
Diversity trainer Lee Mun Wah assembles a diverse group of eight American men to talk about their experience of race relations in the United States. The exchange is sometimes dramatic as they lay bare the pain that racism in the US has caused them.
CORPUS explores the mass adulation and explosive posthumous recognition of Selena Quintanilla, the Tejano rock singer murdered by the president of her fan club in 1995. Pushing beyond the mainstream media's fascination with her violent death, Portillo interviews Selena's family and friends as well as the devoted fans that pilgrimage to Selena's grave in Corpus Christi, Texas, to pay homage to the slain star. Moving and provocative, this humble investigative portrait explores Selena's cultural significance as a pop icon and shines a light on the hopes, fantasies, fears, and realities of young Latinas today.
A look at three U.S. cities, which were part of many communities that violently forced African American families to flee in post-reconstruction America.
In White Like Me, anti-racist educator Tim Wise explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege.
A historical analysis of how groups such as the Nazi’s may use language, symbols, and religious connotation in order to come to power. It raises questions that deserve in depth analysis and consideration. Questions include: Where do legends expand our thinking and where do they bury it? When does spiritual pursuit suddenly turn into fanaticism and violence? Last, have we as a society learned from our past, and if so have forgotten the lessons of the 20th Century? Are we now embarking on a new level only to learn the same old lessons about humanity again? In addressing these questions we are taken into the back drop of the history of Germany beginning in the late 1800’s through the late 20th Century at the eve of the 21st. “A society that does not take archetypes, myths, and symbols seriously will possibly be jumped by them from behind.”