Capturing the Flag (2018)

Director:  Anne de Mare

Run time:  76 minutes

“Capturing the Flag” is an enlightening and inspiring new documentary from Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Anne de Mare that illustrates some of the ways in which voter suppression occurs in America and how the efforts of ordinary citizens can make a difference in ensuring that people are able to vote.”  

—Elizabeth Levin, Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts (full review)

The Loving Story (2011)

Director: Nancy Buirski
Run time: 77 min.

"The improbably named Lovings, Mildred and Richard, make a compelling couple, and not just because she is half-black, half-Native American and he is good ol’ boy white. In a rich collection of 16-millimeter film, old news clips and still photographs, the Lovings don’t look like two people caught up in a cause, they seem like two people caught up in each other.

The Lovings became civil rights activists by default: victims of the times, the color of their skin and a willful, wrongheaded judge in Virginia. By accident, more than design, they made history."

—Alessandra Stanley, New York Times (full review here).

A People Uncounted (2014)

Director: Aaron Yeger
Run Time: 99 min.

"A People Uncounted is a counterpoint to the mainstream cultural stereotypes about the Roma. It’s a crash course in Romani history, from their ethnic roots to the many ways they have been, and continue to be, subjects of political prejudice and violence in an increasingly unstable EU. Approximately 500,000 Roma were killed during the Holocaust, a statistic driven home by the wrenching testimony of survivors who describe horrors ranging from cannibalism to experiencing the cruelty of Dr. Mengele firsthand. Footage of recent genocides, such as those in Rwanda and Bosnia, are used to demonstrate how easily such brutality can become the norm. The growing marginalization of the Roma as described in A People Uncounted shows just how close the tipping point is."
—Jenni Miller, A.V. Club

Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary (2013)

Director: Stephen Vittoria
Run Time: 120 min.
Call Number: HV8701.A28 L66 2013
 
"[T]he movie begins rather bravely with a montage of right-wing pundits who object to Abu-Jamal being described as a 'political prisoner' and want to see him executed. But it quickly takes a detour from the haters to the fans, lining up such famous backers as Alice Walker, Cornel West, Angela Davis and Peter Coyote . . . Mumia gradually becomes a persuasive attempt to celebrate the content of his character, not the violence that apparently led to his imprisonment. Indicting the 'police state' created by Philadelphia’s leaders during the late 1970s/early 1980s, Vittoria creates a context that suggests how easily innocents could be railroaded."
—John Hartl, The Seattle Times

Freedom Riders (2011)

Director: Stanley Nelson
Run Time: 120 min.
Call Number:  E185.61 .F74 2011

"The filmmaker Stanley Nelson has a stunning accomplishment in 'Freedom Riders,' a documentary that chronicles a crucial, devastating episode of the civil rights movement, an episode whose gruesome visuals impinged on the perception of American liberty around the world. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the freedom rides, the film . . . is a story of ennobled youth and noxious hatred, of decided courage and inexplicable brutality. In May 1961 the Congress of Racial Equality sought to challenge the segregation of interstate travel on public transport and sent forth activists, both black and white, and many of them students, on a bus journey through the South, where they were received with violence that law enforcers refused to tame. . . . It is hard to imagine a feature film conveying the events with a more vivid sense of drama or suspense."
—Ginia Bellafante, New York Times

Spies of Mississippi (2014)

Director: Dawn Porter
Run Time: 60 min. 
Call Number: E185.93.M6 S65 2014

"Founded in the 1950s as Supreme Court rulings began to chip away at Jim Crow, the Sovereignty Commission was an instrument of domestic intelligence-gathering whose stated mission was to preserve segregation. From a few operatives working under the governor, it grew into 'the Stasi of Mississippi,' generating upward of 160,000 pages of reports. It gave information to the police, many of whose officers belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. If the commission might have considered its activities technically, if whimsically, 'legal,' the Klan did not bother with such fine points; its tactics included bombings, kidnappings and murder, among other more run-of-the-mill forms of terrorism."
—Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

Call Me Kuchu (2013)

Director: Katherine Fairfax Wright & Malika Zouhali-Worrall
Run Time: 86 min.

"Directed by Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, this is a scary but inspiring film with real heroes and villains. Leading the list of heroes is David Kato, a fearless activist and prime mover in Uganda’s gay rights movement. Uganda’s first openly gay man, he was bludgeoned to death in January 2011 at 46. In a brief biography at the beginning of the film, he tells of his coming out during the six years he lived in South Africa, where a more tolerant atmosphere prevails. "
 —Stephen Holden, New York Times

Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill A Mockingbird (2011)

Director: Mary McDonagh Murphy
Run Time: 82 min.

"It gives the fascinating history of how the book came to be, which involved Truman Capote, a perceptive editor and an act of generosity that helped give Ms. Lee, the novel’s author, the time she needed to write. The reclusive Ms. Lee is conjured through old film clips, published interviews and reminiscences of friends and relatives. . . . The film’s best moments come from other authors—Wally Lamb and Allan Gurganus are particularly eloquent—who read passages from the novel and talk about the book’s impact on them and their writing."
—Neil Genzlinger

Booker's Place (2012)

Director: Raymond De Felitta

Run Time: 91 min.

“In 1966 Frank De Felitta made a documentary for NBC News about life for Southerners in Mississippi. The content of the film upset many white Southerners and led to the beating of a black man, Booker Wright, the loss of his job, and eventually his murder. Forty-six years later Booker's granddaughter, Yvette Johnson, and Frank's son, director Raymond DeFelitta, are on a quest to discover who Booker was and how he changed life for black people.”

—Wiener-Rogers Law Library Catalog

A Good Day to Die (2012)

Directors: David Mueller, Lynn Salt

Run Time: 92 min.

“Chronicles a movement that started a revolution and inspired a nation. By recounting the life story of Dennis Banks, the Native American who co-founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) in 1968 to advocate and protect the rights of American Indians, the film provides an in-depth look at the history and issues surrounding AIM's foundation.

—Wiener-Rogers Law Library Catalog