Film Class: 12 Documentaries You Should Watch About Racism and Police Brutality in America

[playahaitian]

12 Documentaries You Should Watch About Racism and Police Brutality in America

They are worth watching today and always.

www.vulture.com

12 Documentaries You Should Watch About Racism and Police Brutality in America
By Jason Bailey
They are worth watching today and always. Photo: Autumn Lin Photography/Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
Contrary to what you might have seen on your feed, #BlackOutTuesday — today’s social-media initiative started by record-industry executives Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas — is not just about posting a black square on Instagram and calling it a day. The purpose is to support Black Lives Matter protests, amplify black voices, and educate oneself on the history of the movement. “Take a beat for an honest, reflective and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black community,” Agyemang and Thomas urged. To that end, you might be in search of books to read and films to watch on the subjects of protests, racial injustice, and police brutality. Below are 12 documentaries worth watching today and always:

Let the Fire Burn (2013)
In May of 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department attempted to evict the members of the black liberation group MOVE from their row house in a residential area. The group resisted, and police unleashed gunfire, tear gas, and explosives on the home, which officials — with the permission of the mayor and district attorney — opted to let burn. Five children and six adults perished in the blaze, which also destroyed over 60 homes in the neighborhood. Jason Osder’s incendiary documentary account relies less on present-day interviews and narration, and focuses instead on the events as they happened, presenting a meticulous ticktock of an infuriating abuse of power. (Streaming on Kanopy.)
Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982–1992 (2017) / LA 92 (2017)
The April 1992 L.A. uprising wasn’t just a rapid response to the acquittals of the officers charged with the beating of Rodney King — an assault captured on videotape and disseminated on television, one of the first of many viral videos of police misconduct. The protests, many activists at the time made clear, addressed the long history of friction between the LAPD and the city’s African-American and Latinx communities. John Ridley’s documentary painstakingly details that history, providing valuable context for the events of April 1992, as well as the continuing discourse in the city.
Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin’s documentary also covers the 1992 L.A. uprising, but takes an approach closer to Let the Fire Burn; it’s a present-tense accounting of the events, re-created as they happened via news coverage, home videos, and archival materials. The context provided by Let It Fall is certainly helpful (these two films are best viewed together), but LA 92 brilliantly captures the feelings of inevitability and helplessness that tend to swirl around such protests — a sense that unrest has been brewing for some time, and that there’s no end in sight. (Both are streaming on Netflix.)
Whose Streets? (2017)
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Directors Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis took their cameras to the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, for this ground-level account of the protests that rocked the nation in the days and weeks after the murder of Michael Brown Jr. Mixing their footage with videos taken by protesters and activists, Folayan and Davis create a work of stunning immediacy, capturing both the bravery and the fears of participants, who understand they have no more ground to give. (Streaming on Hulu and Kanopy.)
Copwatch (2017)
The advocacy organization We Copwatch, which trains regular citizens in the laws and rights that allow them to videotape police activity, predated those protests, but it gained particular relevance after the high-profile deaths of Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray. Camilla Hall’s documentary follows We Copwatch founder Jacob Crawford from his home in Oakland to the sites of those murders, and the cameramen he recruits along the way. Hall follows those cases through the system (such as it is), and dives deep into the day-to-day work of the organization. Copwatch is an observational documentary, and an intimate one, acquainting viewers with these citizen journalists and listening to the stories they tell. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)
16 Shots (2019)
Just a few months after the death of Michael Brown, another midwestern city was rocked by the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot and killed by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. The circumstances of that shooting — and how the officers on the scene and people in power throughout the city attempted to control (and cover up) the narrative in its aftermath — are the subject of this documentary account from director Rick Rowley. (Streaming on Showtime.)
Stephen Maing’s Crime + Punishment is streaming on Hulu. Photo: Sundance Institue
Do Not Resist (2016)
The rapid response of a chillingly militarized police force — riot gear, tear gas, rubber bullets, military vehicles — has rendered the idea of “peaceful protest” all the more oblique. For some insight into that shift in policing, seek out Craig Atkinson’s informative documentary, which begins with the Ferguson protests but gradually widens its scope to detail how mind-boggling post-9/11 expenditures for local police forces have resulted in departments more equipped to go to war with the communities they serve than to protect them. (Available for rental or purchase via Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, etc.)
The Force (2017) / Crime + Punishment (2018)
For decades, the Fox series Cops has done much to simplify the relationship between police and the communities they serve, working with departments to flatten daily interactions into black-and-white, good-guy, bad-guy binaries. Peter Nicks’s powerful documentary The Force (streaming on Netflix), on the other hand, uses the stylistic tools of Cops and similar shows — handheld photography, observational style, focus on the day-to-day grind — to tell the much more complex story of an Oakland police department that attempts to rebound from decades of scandal and abuse, only to be confronted with even more of its “bad apples.”
Similarly difficult attempts at reform abound in Stephen Maing’s Crime + Punishment (streaming on Hulu), in which a group of black and Latino NYPD officers attempt to hold their department accountable for policing policies that unfairly discriminate against their communities. Both films are eye-opening accounts of a system that seems, at times, unsalvageable.
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
As more than one social-media historian has reminded us, the Stonewall uprising was a riot — more pointedly, a riot against police brutality, in response to an NYPD raid of Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn, in the early morning of June 29, 1969. One of the participants was Marsha P. Johnson, the transgender activist known to many as the “mayor of Christopher Street,” and there was much more to her life than Stonewall. David France’s documentary delves into her fascinating life and suspicious death, which remains unsolved and un-investigated by the same police department that Johnson battled at Stonewall. (Streaming on Netflix.)
13th (2016)
The tricky thing about reading up on the issues of the moment is that the struggle does not begin nor end with police brutality, or street protests, or even with what we immediately think of as systemic racism. To that end, police brutality and mass incarceration go hand in hand — the “before” and “after” of biases in the criminal-justice system. The definitive exploration of that issue remains Ava DuVernay’s 13th (streaming on Netflix), a wide-ranging documentary in which scholars and historians detail how the relatively recent emphasis on imprisonment has reverberated through American culture. (DuVerany’s docuseries When They See Us, also on Netflix, is a helpful companion.)
I Am Not Your Negro (2016)
Raoul Peck’s stunning essay film is centered on James Baldwin’s notes from his unfinished book, Remember This House, a meditation on the key figures of the civil-rights movement. But Baldwin’s magnificent prose on those issues (used as narration for the film, spoken by Samuel L. Jackson) felt like a balm for frustrated audiences when the film was first released, just after the election of Donald Trump — a reminder that the guidance and wisdom of the past remains applicable in the present, a point further underlined by Peck’s use of contemporary footage to illustrate these words, written decades ago. Baldwin’s essays and interviews have made the rounds on social media quite a bit over the past few days; they continue, sadly, to apply to our current culture with little alteration. (Streaming on Prime Video.)

 

[dik cashmere]

Thanks for this

 

[ORIGINAL NATION]

LEGACY OF A DREAM. I use to watch that documentary a lot.

 

[playahaitian]

....

 

[roots69]

Great thread!!

Remember cops in this corporation/colony/country were form as slave patrol!! But don't forget a lot of euro colonist came to this colony as slaves!! Lots of them!! Just thought I would share!!


A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing

Written by Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.
The birth and development of the American police can be traced to a multitude of historical, legal and political-economic conditions. The institution of slavery and the control of minorities, however, were two of the more formidable historic features of American society shaping early policing. Slave patrols and Night Watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities. For example, New England settlers appointed Indian Constables to police Native Americans (National Constable Association, 1995), the St. Louis police were founded to protect residents from Native Americans in that frontier city, and many southern police departments began as slave patrols. In 1704, the colony of Carolina developed the nation's first slave patrol. Slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order and to assist the wealthy landowners in recovering and punishing slaves who essentially were considered property.
Policing was not the only social institution enmeshed in slavery. Slavery was fully institutionalized in the American economic and legal order with laws being enacted at both the state and national divisions of government. Virginia, for example, enacted more than 130 slave statutes between 1689 and 1865. Slavery and the abuse of people of color, however, was not merely a southern affair as many have been taught to believe. Connecticut, New York and other colonies enacted laws to criminalize and control slaves. Congress also passed fugitive Slave Laws, laws allowing the detention and return of escaped slaves, in 1793 and 1850. As Turner, Giacopassi and Vandiver (2006:186) remark, “the literature clearly establishes that a legally sanctioned law enforcement system existed in America before the Civil War for the express purpose of controlling the slave population and protecting the interests of slave owners. The similarities between the slave patrols and modern American policing are too salient to dismiss or ignore. Hence, the slave patrol should be considered a forerunner of modern American law enforcement.”
The legacy of slavery and racism did not end after the Civil War. In fact it can be argued that extreme violence against people of color became even worse with the rise of vigilante groups who resisted Reconstruction. Because vigilantes, by definition, have no external restraints, lynch mobs had a justified reputation for hanging minorities first and asking questions later. Because of its tradition of slavery, which rested on the racist rationalization that Blacks were sub-human, America had a long and shameful history of mistreating people of color, long after the end of the Civil War. Perhaps the most infamous American vigilante group, the Ku Klux Klan started in the 1860s, was notorious for assaulting and lynching Black men for transgressions that would not be considered crimes at all, had a White man committed them. Lynching occurred across the entire county not just in the South. Finally, in 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, which prohibited state actors from violating the Civil Rights of all citizens in part because of law enforcements’ involvement with the infamous group. This legislation, however, did not stem the tide of racial or ethnic abuse that persisted well into the 1960s.
Though having white skin did not prevent discrimination in America, being White undoubtedly made it easier for ethnic minorities to assimilate into the mainstream of America. The additional burden of racism has made that transition much more difficult for those whose skin is black, brown, red, or yellow. In no small part because of the tradition of slavery, Blacks have long been targets of abuse. The use of patrols to capture runaway slaves was one of the precursors of formal police forces, especially in the South. This disastrous legacy persisted as an element of the police role even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In some cases, police harassment simply meant people of African descent were more likely to be stopped and questioned by the police, while at the other extreme, they have suffered beatings, and even murder, at the hands of White police. Questions still arise today about the disproportionately high numbers of people of African descent killed, beaten, and arrested by police in major urban cities of America.
Victor E. Kappeler, Ph.D.
Associate Dean and Foundation Professor

 

[durham]

Props

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

Bookmarked.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

The Best Movies Studios Are Releasing for Free Because of the Protests
One more reason now is a good time to watch Selma, I Am Not Your Negro, America to Me, and more.
By SAM ADAMS
JUNE 05, 2020

With the nation engaged in a prolonged confrontation about the history of systemic racism and anti-racist books selling out of bookstores, many filmmakers and distributors are making movies and TV series about black Americans free to watch. Some are hard-hitting documentaries about police brutality and some are simply overlooked narratives by black filmmakers, but they’re all important, and in many cases, essential. Here are some of the best.

America to Me. This 10-part documentary series directed by Steve James (Hoop Dreams), Bing Liu (Minding the Gap), Kevin Shaw, and Rebecca Parrish spends a year following black, white, and mixed-race students of a progressive public high school outside of Chicago that has struggled to close its racial “achievement gap.” It’s a penetrating look at how the best of white liberal intentions can still fall short, and how young people of color persevere with or in spite of their help. It’s now streaming for free (just scroll down to hit play), courtesy of Starz.

Black Mother. The first feature from documentary filmmaker Khalik Allah, who also contributed to Beyoncé’s Lemonade, is available for free courtesy of the Criterion Channel.

Burn Motherf*cker Burn. Sacha Jenkins’ 2017 documentary about the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King is now free to stream on YouTube, courtesy of Showtime.




Black Panthers. This 1970 portrait of Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton directed by the late great Agnès Varda is now streaming for free courtesy of the Criterion Channel.

Cane River. The story of a young man who turns down a career in the NFL to return to his rural Louisiana hometown and work his father’s farm, Horace Jenkins’ first and only feature was nearly lost: He died soon after completing it, and it was never distributed. But it was revived and restored in 2019, and it’s now available free courtesy of the Criterion Channel.

Daughters of the Dust. Julie Dash’s landmark 1991 feature tells the story of three generations of Gullah women on a remote island off the South Carolina coast. Set in 1902, the film, whose dialogue is in Gullah creole, was called “achingly gorgeous” and “a lyrical dream of rural life that’s plainspoken about its troubles” when it was selected by a panel of filmmakers and critics for Slate’s Black Film Canon.

A Huey P. Newton Story. Spike Lee films the one-man show starring Roger Guenveur Smith (Do the Right Thing’s Smiley) as the Black Panther leader. Free courtesy of Starz.

My Brother’s Wedding. Charles Burnett’s follow-up to his legendary Killer of Sheep is another chapter in the life of South Central Los Angeles, buried after a rough-cut debut in 1983 got mixed reviews and finally completed by Burnett in 2007. Free courtesy of the Criterion Channel.

I Am Not Your Negro. Magnolia Pictures is making three documentaries about black American subjects free to residents of eight cities, including Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia, and St. Paul. They’ll be available on a weekly schedule, beginning Sunday with this riveting portrait of James Baldwin, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, directed by Raoul Peck (Lumumba), and based on Remember This House, the book Baldwin was writing at the time of his death.

Just Mercy. Available free for the month of June, Destin Daniel Cretton’s true story stars Michael B. Jordan as real-life attorney Bryan Stevenson, whose Equal Justice Initiative fights wrongful convictions and racial disparities in the justice system. Jamie Foxx co-stars as Walter “Johnny D.” McMillian, who was sentenced to death for the murder of an 18-year-old woman despite dozens of witnesses who testified that he was miles away at the time of her death.

Let the Fire Burn. On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police firebombed a house occupied by the black liberation group MOVE, killing 11 and destroying 61 homes. Jason Osder’s documentary, edited by Cameraperson and The Hottest August’s Nels Bangerter, uses archival footage to investigate what led to that still-notorious action, and how the city handled the aftermath. Maysles Cinema’s online presentation, free to a limited number of viewers, includes an introduction from filmmaker Penny Lane.

Losing Ground. The second feature by black playwright and author Kathleen Collins was virtually unseen when it was released in 1982, but it was hailed as a sensational discovery when it was rereleased in 2015. The story of a married philosophy professor and painter at a crossroads in their marriage, it’s a “no-budget charmer that mixes lighthearted philosophical inquiry with serious whimsy” according to Slate’s Black Film Canon, and it’s now available free courtesy of the Criterion Channel.

Selma. Paramount is making Ava Duvernay’s movie about the 1965 voting rights marches, starring David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr., available for the month of June. Oyelowo said earlier this week that after the movie’s cast staged a protest against the death of Eric Garner, Oscar voters called the studio to complain. According to the Black Film Canon, it’s “the definitive movie about the struggle, and about how change happens in fevered times: through hard, dedicated, dangerous work.”

16 Shots. Richard Rowley’s 2019 documentary examines the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot to death by a Chicago police officer later convicted of second-degree murder. Free to stream on YouTube, courtesy of Showtime.

The Best Movies Studios Are Releasing for Free Because of the Protests

One more reason now is a good time to watch Selma, I Am Not Your Negro, America to Me, and more.

slate.com

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

Burn Motherf*cker Burn. Sacha Jenkins’ 2017 documentary about the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King is now free to stream on YouTube, courtesy of Showtime.

I watched this one tonight. Very informative. I learned about the Rodney King beating aftermath in the past but this was a great refresher. Listening to Death Certificate right now.

 

[spider705]

I'll be back

 

[Sango]

Was just about logging off for the night and boom! Props.