Film and Video Collections
This Week's Theme
Each week, we feature items from our collections which correspond to a theme chosen by our staff!
This week we're celebrating black history month with our favorite films directed by black women!
Directed by Black Women on Streaming
Pariah (2011)
A black teenager (Adepero Oduye) living in Brooklyn embraces her identity as a lesbian, but she struggles with how much she can confide in her parents (Kim Wayans, Charles Parnell).
Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort South Carolina (1940)
This short documentary film directed by Zora Neale Hurston shows religious services taking place in a South Carolina Gullah community.
Illusions (1983)
It's 1942, one year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Duprée, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo..
Hell-Bound Train (1930)
This film is the work of self-taught filmmakers James and Eloyce Gist, African American evangelists who employed cinema as a tool for their traveling ministry. Their surreal visual allegories were screened in churches and meeting halls, accompanied by a sermon and the passing of a collection plate. Rather than having a linear story, the film is instead a catalog of iniquity, a car-by-car dramatization of the sins of the Jazz Age (including gambling, dancing, alcohol, and the mistreatment of animals), presided over by a horned devil and culminating in a colossal derailment (a model train tossed into a bonfire)
Directed by Black Women on DVD
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The Watermelon Woman by
Publication Date: 1997Cheryl, a young black woman in a video store, is making a documentary about an obscure black actress from the 1930's. When she discovers that the actress (known as "the Watermelon Woman") had a white lesbian lover, Cheryl just happens to fall in love with a very cute white woman herself! -
Love and Basketball by
Publication Date: 2000This film is divided into the quarters of a basketball game and tells the story of Quincy and Monica. It traces their lives as they run parallel and run apart -- from childhood, to high school, to college -- concluding with Quincy and Monica as adults. Both play basketball and each dreams of playing on a professional level. For Quincy, it is easier and expected since he is the son of a professional ballplayer. Monica has it harder being both a woman when there was no professional league, and as a daughter whose mother cannot understand why her daughter wants to be an athlete. -
Daughters of the Dust by
Publication Date: 1991Story of a large African-American family as they prepare to move North from the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia at the dawn of the 20th century. -
Eve's Bayou by
Publication Date: 1997Eve's family seems perfect until she catches her doctor father more than just examining one of his patients and Eve's tormented by the family secrets that come out. -
Harriet by
Publication Date: 2020Based on the thrilling and inspirational life of an iconic American freedom fighter, the movie tells the extraordinary tale of Harriet Tubman's escape from slavery and transformation into one of America's greatest heroes. Her courage, ingenuity, and tenacity freed hundreds of slaves and changed the course of history. -
Middle of Nowhere by
Publication Date: 2012Devoted wife Ruby drops out of medical school after her husband Derek receives an eight-year prison sentence, and struggles to find the courage to remain faithful and supportive as the demands of being a prison wife weigh heavily on her shoulders. -
Selma by
Publication Date: 2014Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historical struggle to secure voting rights for all people. A dangerous and terrifying campaign that culminated with an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1964.