Race & Ethnicity in America

Named the best film of the year by The New York Times, Robert Greene’s extraordinary Bisbee ‘17 radically combines collaborative documentary, western, and musical elements to recreate a mass deportation of striking miners (mostly Mexican and Eastern European immigrants) that occurred in 1917. Greene confronts issues of immigration, unionization and environmental damage while linking a tragic moment in American history to our own turbulent times.

Based on the acclaimed book by sociologist Michael Kimmel, Angry White Men offers crucial insights into why so many white American male voters seem to be so full of rage and hell-bent on smashing the political order. Drawing on extensive research, Kimmel elucidates the seismic economic, cultural, and political shifts that have transformed the American social landscape.

Akosua Adoma Owusu is a Ghanaian-American filmmaker, producer and cinematographer whose award-winning work addresses the collision of identities, and themes such as feminism, queerness and African immigrants interacting in African, white American, and black American culture. This edition presents thirteen of her short films.

“In 1946, my great-grandfather murdered a black man named Bill Spann and got away with it.” So begins this acclaimed documentary which takes us on a journey through the American South – interweaving scenes from To Kill a Mockingbird and Rosa Parks’ investigation into the Recy Taylor case – to uncover the truth behind a horrific incident and the societal mores that empowered it.

Embodying the spirit of his poems, the new film from Billy Woodberry, director of Bless Their Little Hearts, is a vivid appreciation of Bob Kaufman, the legendary Beat figure, featuring interviews with his contemporaries, readings, rare photos and footage, and a soundtrack with the likes of Billie Holiday and Ornette Coleman.

From director Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times, Ivory Tower) comes an electrifying portrait of writer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili and her acclaimed one-woman show "Bronx Gothic," a story about two 12-year-old black girls coming of age in the 1980s.

Emmy-winning director Andrew Cohn’s absorbing documentary observes the individual pursuits of four adult learners seeking a high school diploma, fraught with the challenges of daily life and the broader systemic roadblocks faced by many low income Americans.

MILWAUKEE 53206 is America’s most incarcerated zip code; 62% of adult males in this mostly African-American community have spent time in a correctional facility. This urgent documentary examines how decades of poverty, unemployment, and a lack of opportunity has contributed to the crisis of mass incarceration in this and other communities across the nation.

From urban farms in Detroit to Native-owned agriculture projects across the midwest to guerrilla gardens in Zurich, Wild Plants is a kaleidoscopic portrait of activists around the world who are creating their own botanic utopias.

This tender portrait of an Inupiaq Eskimo community who are living on an island that is disappearing into the sea is both an elegy to the indigenous cultures of the Arctic and a harrowing vision of climate change in America.

Drawing upon the rich mythology of Ghana, this magical short film combines semi-autobiographical elements with local folklore to tell the story of a young American woman who returns to West Africa for her father’s funeral, only to discover his hidden double identity.

In a remote arctic village, a young Inuk boy's transition into adulthood becomes a quiet and devastating portrait of the issues facing the entire Inuit community in the outstanding documentary Living with Giants

Filmmaker Deborah Stratman recounts eleven episodes in American history — from the violent eviction of the Cherokee to the invention of the nuclear reactor to the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton — to consider how societies are shaped by belief and ideology.

This intimate, moving documentary follows young Lakota riders on a 300-mile trek on horseback through the South Dakota badlands, as they retrace the fateful journey of their ancestors that culminated at Wounded Knee.

A remarkable record of black life in the 1940s, as found in the films of Spencer Williams, the pioneering African American filmmaker. A new essay by Thom Andersen, director of Los Angeles Plays Itself.

From the director of Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the remarkable story of Cuban-American artist Carmen Herrera, a pioneering abstract painter in the '40s and '50s who only found recognition as she approached her 100th birthday.

An essential documentary, this is an incisive and wide-ranging examination of the prison and its place – social, economic and psychological – in American society.

The struggles of a girls soccer team in a mostly hispanic, inner city neighborhood reveals the obstacles that low-income students face in their quest for higher education.

The rich and essential history of Latino immigrants in the military, specifically during the Vietnam War.