In 1936, Victor H. Green (1892-1960) published The Negro Motorist Green Book, a book that was both a travel guide and a survival manual, to help African-Americans navigate safe those regions of the United States where segregation and Jim Crow laws were disgracefully applied.
A City Decides chronicles the events that led to the integration of the St. Louis public schools in 1954. An Oscar-nominated short documentary from 1956.
The story of Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians interned with Japanese Americans during World War II. The wife of a Japanese American, Ishigo refused to be separated from her husband and was interned along with him. Based on the personal papers of Estelle Ishigo and her novel Lone Heart Mountain.
A man that is a stranger, is an incredibly easy man to hate. However, walking in a stranger’s shoes, even for a short while, can transform a perceived adversary into an ally. Power is found in coming to know our neighbor’s hearts. For in the darkness of ignorance, enemies are made and wars are waged, but in the light of understanding, family extends beyond blood lines and legacies of hatred crumble.
The real dream of the American pastor Martin Luther King was never limited to civil rights. He hoped for a just America, where poverty would no longer have a place. Social equality was for him the only guarantee of a true emancipation. During the last four years of his life, he mobilized all his energy to realize this "other dream". But there were many obstacles: he was scorned by white, racist America, abandoned by the political class, but also by some of his own people, who decided to turn their backs on the principle of non-violence.
A documentary on funk and P-funk and the bands and artists that made it all happen: James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Maurice White and his Earth Wind & Fire, Average White Band, Kool & The Gang and lots more. It tells the story of black American music and how it evolved from funk to more main stream to disco to hiphop to contemporary R 'n B and its impact on society. Music and live footage from the bands, interviews with artists and band members of Kool & The Gang, Earth Wind & Fire, George Clinton and lots more.
The film questions whether the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s effectively changed the Black community, and American society more widely, and examines the notion of Black power itself. Greaves interviewed major Black leaders, such as Franklin Thomas, Clifton Wharton Jr., Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Lerone Bennett Jr. to present a candid take on issues within the African American community, revealing wider societal problems in America at large.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
In the fall of 1962, a dramatic series of events made Civil Rights history and changed a way of life. On the eve of James Meredith becoming the first African-American to attend class at the University of Mississippi, the campus erupted into a night of rioting between those opposed to the integration of the school and those trying to enforce it. Before the rioting ended, the National Guard and Federal troops were called in to put an end to the violence and enforce Meredith's rights as an American citizen.