A movie about the way people live under slavery, about Africans connecting to their roots, and also maybe time travel?
Category Archives: Black Directors
CAR WASH (1976)
A small but really interesting comedy about the workers on one long day at a car wash, with an ultra-famous disco track for a title song.
TONGUES UNTIED (1989)
A documentary featuring the voices of Black gay men, which in 1989 was enough almost to turn Washington upside down.
LOSING GROUND (1982)
A very low-budget 1980s film with concerns far more esoteric than your average movie, which wouldn’t be rediscovered until decades later.
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991)
A unique film about the Gullah culture on the coast of South Carolina, with a beautiful visual sense and an insistence on discursive storytelling.
SUPER FLY (1972)
A well-pitched exercise in peak blaxploitation style more than an actual movie, with an all-timer of a soundtrack.
CROOKLYN (1994)
Spike Lee’s semiautobiographical depiction of his own childhood feels “true,” but really rubs me the wrong way.
HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE (1987)
Somewhere between a social satire and sketch comedy resides this weird late-80s time capsule that I thought was funny but not necessarily notable.
THE LEARNING TREE (1969)
The first ever studio movie from a Black director tells the semi-autobiographical story of its director growing up in 1920s Kansas, and I was actually pretty impressed with it as a movie.
HOUSE PARTY (1990)
A very fun teen time capsule from 1990 that has a lot on its mind but resists any major dramatics.
