4 LITTLE GIRLS (1997) & WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS (2006)

This Spike Lee double feature will require multiple breaks – not so much for the length (1 hour, 42 minutes and 4 hours, fifteen minutes, respectively), as for the emotionality of these dual achievements in documentary filmmaking. The title of the former refers to four African American girls, ages 11 to 14, who were the victims of a Ku Klux Klan bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. The film traces the Civil Rights Movement’s efforts in that city leading up to the tragedy. The latter film documents the epic failures of the local, state, and federal governments before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Louisiana, in late August 2005. (Go the extra mile and check out Lee’s 2010 sequel to LEVEES, IF GOD IS WILLING AND DA CREEK DON’T RISE.)

13TH (2016)

Director Ava DuVernay’s follow-up to SELMA is this explosive documentary highlighting the throughline of systemic racism from antebellum slavery to modern-day mass incarceration. The title refers to the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution that forbids “slavery or involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime.”

20 FEET FROM STARDOM (2013)

Black women in America have long been relegated to the background, both figuratively and, as this documentary shows, literally. Uplifting, heartbreaking, and celebratory, 20 FEET tells the stories of several women of color who are among the most requested and respected back-up singers of our time. In their journeys is a metaphor for workers who are essential to our livelihood, but rarely (if ever) acknowledged for it.

THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE: 1967-1975 (2011)

This documentary culled from footage shot by Swedish journalists and found some thirty years after it was filmed sheds light on a chapter in American history that should dispel the false notion that the Black Power movement was simply the African-American counterpart to public proclamations of White Power. Through filmed historical events interspersed with contemporary interviews and commentaries, MIXTAPE shows that for the majority of its proponents, Black Power was never about the superiority or supremacy that White Power advocates claim, but about equality and dignity and representation – by any means necessary. And if that still sounds brash and unpalatable, consider that the United States was founded on the very same principles.

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (2016)

When the author, intellectual, and activist James Baldwin died, he left behind an unfinished 30-page manuscript titled “Remember This House,” intended to ultimately be a memoir of his friendships with three assassinated African American leaders: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Director Raoul Peck enlists narrator Samuel L. Jackson in communicating his vision of what the finished project might have been. The result is an unflinching and bold account of racism in America in the words of one of its most gifted sons.

LIFE AND DEBT (2001)

Moving the conversation of systemic oppression off-shore, LIFE AND DEBT highlights the deleterious impact of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s policies to the economic and social well-being of Jamaica. The loans offered by these institutions are loaded with restrictive and penalizing covenants, making the argument that IMF and World Bank “assistance” to developing nations (particularly those primarily populated by people of color) amounts to little more than predatory lending and is imperialism and colonialism by another name.

O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA (2016)

A dictionary and a thesaurus together are still insufficient to describe the scope and depth of this documentary that is ostensibly about the rise and fall of Orenthal James Simpson – the African American, Heisman Trophy-winning running back who took the National Football League and the nation by (smiling) storm right up until he was charged with the murder of his white, blonde wife – but is more truthfully about race, celebrity, policing, the law, domestic violence, and criminal justice in America. Ezra Edelman’s magnus opus so defies categorization that he won both an Academy Award and an Emmy for his directorial contribution to documentary filmmaking. (For a deeper dive into race, policing, and more in late 20th century Los Angeles, see John Ridley’s LET IT FALL: LOS ANGELES 1982-1992 or National Geographic’s LA 92.)