#black documentary

i just got out of a showing of a beautiful documentary called ‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ and wanted to recommend it to you (if you’ve not already watched it) and also to your followers. it grapples with a lot of different themes that i feel are relevant to what you want to platform on your blog (like Black People’s ownership over their bodies stories and images, the concept of Black Women permeating the social consciousness as guiders and teachers but never people unto themselves, racial identity in the digital age, and a lot more that i can’t possibly summaries in this ask). it’s also just visually beautiful, i think Jazmin Jones (the director) alongside her team did a really wonderful job of showcasing what it feels like to be a POC navigating yourself and the stories of your people in a world that actively devalues such work.

i hope you’re taking care of yourself, and i hope today is kind to you 🫶🏼

Black Film of the Week: STILL BILL (2009)

Directed by Damani Baker & Alex Vlack 

Why: A favorite film of the staff, we had the documentary “Still Bill” on our list, but with the passing of its subject, legendary soul singer Bill Withers, we had to move this up.  

“Still Bill” is easily one of the best music documentaries you’ll ever see.  

Covering the history of this passionate man, who before he broke into music served in the Navy and then made toilets for airplanes, the film charts his rise in the business and his decisions to leave it, to his life as an aged musician working to maintain a good relationship with his wife and children, specifically his daughter Kori, who is a burgeoning singer/songwriter like her pops.

What Baker, who you may also know from his personal docu “The House on Coco Road”, and Vlack are able to do here is connect the audience with a man we think we know through his songs, but because he was never as mainstream as a Marvin Gaye nor stayed in the music business too long, we don’t truly know - but by midway through the film will fall further in love with.  Don’t get it twisted though, the music does make this film rise to the top, entrancing audiences into Bill’s life.  

For many of us that didn’t grow up in the early 70’s, through interviews with Bill, if you watched this film in its first run it was probably the first time you saw footage from the PBS show “Soul” and its host/producer Ellis Haizlip, whose own dynamic life, as well as the show’s, was recently covered in the documentary “Mr. Soul”. There are also cameos from Cornel West, Sting, Corey Glover, and “The Black Godfather” Clarence Avant.

Powerful, interesting documentary:

Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story (2012)

While filming a documentary in Mississippi in 1965, Frank De Felitta forever changed the life of an African-American waiter and his family. In 2011, Frank's son returns to the Delta to examine the repercussions of that fateful encounter.

This weekend, you can watch a plethora of documentaries about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Kanopy with an account.