Last year, Stanley Nelson’s film The Black Panthers was on the DOC NYC Short List. This year, as he receives a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Visionaries Tribute, we bring back his breakthrough film The Black Press, which traces the history of African-American journalism. Throughout the 20th century, papers like the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh […]
NYC PREMIERE As students of color began arriving on college campuses in unprecedented numbers in the late 1960s, they found institutions ill-prepared to adapt to diversity. Unwilling to accept the absence of their unique cultures and histories, or to ignore prejudicial treatment, students mobilized for black and ethnic-studies programs, even taking up arms when necessary. […]
NYC PREMIERE In 1983, Fannie Haughton, a young activist and teacher inured to injustices facing African Americans, sought a haven for her family in Grenada, an island nation that had seen an Afrocentric revolution just four years prior. Not too long after, the island was invaded by the U.S. military, and the dream of a […]
NYC PREMIERE Padraig O’Malley is legendary among the international human rights community for being a negotiator in crisis zones from Northern Ireland to Kosovo to Iraq. He funds his efforts as the co-owner of a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But he also struggles with addictions to alcohol and work. We meet Padraig in the third […]
US PREMIERE During the rise of tourism in Tunisia in the 1970s, young local men from poor families would romance European women. It was their business – or “bezness” – in the local parlance. Filmmaker Alex Pitstra was born from such a union and raised by his mother in The Netherlands. As he seeks to […]
WORLD PREMIERE From executive producer Bill Moyers and a team of producers that includes Marc Levin (Class Divide) comes the first film to focus exclusively on former detainees of Rikers Island, offering searing testimonials about the deep-seated culture of systemic violence and corruption that has plagued the notorious NYC jail for decades. From the trauma […]
Ava DuVernay (Selma, Queen Sugar) explores troubling links between race and incarceration in America. The film’s title refers to the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that abolished slavery in 1865, but with the loophole clause ‘except as a punishment for crime.’ In lively interviews across the political spectrum – including Michelle Alexander, Angela Davis, […]
Director Dawn Porter made the 2013 Short List with her film Gideon’s Army. This year, she’s back at DOC NYC to receive the Robert and Anne Drew Award at the Visionaries Tribute. Her latest film Trapped focuses on two Southern reproductive-health clinics struggling to stay open against a wave of anti-choice legislation. One is Whole Woman’s […]
James Baldwin left behind notes for an unfinished book about three martyrs of civil rights: Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Now filmmaker Raoul Peck (Lumumba) draws upon Baldwin’s unseen text and his other writings to craft this stunning film essay that connects their crusades to today. The poetry and precision of […]
More than 20 years after the media spectacle of the “trial of the century,” O.J. Simpson continues to fascinate the public. In this expansive, ambitious and provocative project, Ezra Edelman revisits not only the murder of Simpson’s ex-wife and its infamous aftermath, but the story of O.J.’s entire life, before and after. Encompassing America’s complicated […]