Selected Shorts

August 16, 2015 - 7:00 pm

Teach Our Children (1972)

Documenting the 1971 Attica prison rebellion with footage of the calamity and subsequent interviews with guards and prisoners, this penetrating documentary also critiques the systemic subjugation of people of color in America, and gives voice to those at Attica who organized to secure their rights under abject conditions.

Director: Christine Choy, Susan Robeson. Digital video, b/w, in English and Spanish with English subtitles, 35 min.

Free, White & 21 (1980)

Howardena Pindell delivers a stark direct-camera monologue recounting incidents in which she was discriminated against for being an African American woman. A blonde white woman (Pindell in disguise) injects a cynical rebuttal, claiming Pindell is just being paranoid.

Director: Howardena Pindell. Digital video, color, 12 min.

Print courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, preserved with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

I Am Somebody (1970)

This inspiring documentary chronicles the struggles of underpaid female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1969, seeking to unionize as they heroically face down the National Guard and public opinion.

Producer: Madeline Anderson. Director: Madeline Anderson. Cinematographer: Don Hunstein, Roland Mitchell. Editor: Madeline Anderson. 16mm, color, 30 min.

A Dream is What You Wake Up From (1978)

An intimate portrait of members of three contemporary Black families, giving insight to the societal, economic, gendered and sometimes elusive forces that insidiously circumscribe and condition their everyday lives.

Director: Larry Bullard, Carolyn Johnson. Cinematographer: Larry Bullard. Editor: Allan Siegel. With: Lauren Craig, Kym Fleming, Damian Hayes, Cheryl Daniels, Onaje Frank Ruffin. 16mm, color, 50 min.

Part of:

Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986

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