The best Angela Davis’s movies
We present our ranking of the best Angela Davis’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Angela Davis.
13th
8.2/10
An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
7.3/10
A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
7.6/10
Examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in US society from 1967 to 1975. It features footage of the movement shot by Swedish journalists in the United States during that period and includes the appearances of Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and other activists, artists, and leaders central to the movement.
Emicida: AmarElo - It's All for Yesterday
8.5/10
Between scenes from his concert in São Paulo's oft-inaccessible Theatro Municipal, rapper and activist Emicida celebrates the rich legacy of Black Brazilian culture.
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners
7/10
FREE ANGELA is a feature-length documentary about Angela Davis and the high stakes crime, political movement, and trial that catapults the 26 year-old newly appointed philosophy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles into a seventies revolutionary political icon. Nearly forty years later, and for the first time, Angela Davis speaks frankly about the actions that branded her as a terrorist and simultaneously spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom.
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
7.7/10
This artful and intimate meditation on the legendary storyteller examines her life, her works, and the powerful themes she has confronted throughout her literary career. Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, history, the United States, and the human condition.
De Cabral a George Floyd: Onde Arde o Fogo Sagrado da Liberdade
Through clippings, the film draws a narrative line between the construction of racism in Brazil and the United States, having as base the European invasion of the continent, police violence, the genocide of the black people, the massacre of indigenous peoples, religious violence, the criminalization of funk music, structural racism in art and education, the importance of quota policy and the need urgent historical repair as a commitment by the Brazilian state to the black people.
A Huey P. Newton Story
7.1/10
A Huey P. Newton Story is a 2001 film directed by Spike Lee. It is a filmed performance of Roger Guenveur Smith's one-man show of the same name. Smith sits in a chair on a stage and tells about the past, mostly dealing with Huey P. Newton's life and times.
Criminal Queers
Criminal Queers visualizes a radical trans/queer struggle against the prison industrial complex and toward a world without walls. Remembering that prison breaks are both a theoretical and material practice of freedom, this film imagines what spaces might be opened up if crowbars, wigs, and metal files become tools for transformation.
The House on Coco Road
7.4/10
An intimate documentary exploration of heritage and history against the backdrop of a brewing Afro-centric revolution as the U.S. government prepares to invade the island nation of Grenada. First hand accounts from activists Angela Davis, Fania Davis and Fannie Haughton weave together director Damani Baker’s family portrait of utopian dreams, resistance and civil unrest with a film score composed by music luminary Meshell Ndegeocello.
This Is Personal
5.7/10
While the 2016 election catalyzed the Women’s March and a new era of feminist activism, Tamika Mallory and Erika Andiola have been fighting for their communities for decades. Their stories expose the fundamental connection between personal and political and raise the question: what's intersectionality and can it save the world?
Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary
6.5/10
"Director Yolande du Luart had been involved in Lettrist circles in France before decamping for California to study film at UCLA, where her classmates included Charles Burnett and Haile Gerima. During this time, UCLA professor Angela Davis was a subject of increasing scrutiny after coming out as a Communist, provoking the ire of administrators and governor Ronald Reagan. Believing that Davis would be an ideal film subject, du Luart immediately began making a documentary, though she would ultimately return to France to complete the project after receiving unwanted attention from the FBI. “Over the course of events,” writes Nicole Brenez, “this appreciative and sensitive portrait of a politically engaged philosopher had been transformed into a call for the liberation of an imprisoned activist and an internationalist revolutionary manifesto.”" - Film at Lincoln Center
Black Is … Black Ain’t
7.7/10
African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.
Angela Davis Is at Your Mercy
6.9/10
In the aftermath of the arrest of Angela Davis, Jean Genet reads a text denouncing racist US policy, supporting the Black Panthers party and Angela Davis for a television show that will be completely censored.
Salt of the earth US
United States of America, early 1980s. From the height of a fifty-story building located in the center of New York on a granite cliff in Manhattan, people on the streets seem small, and the problems that surround them from all sides are impossible to distinguish at all. But they are - these problems are difficult, painful and inescapable. In their tighter grip, today's America and its millions of citizens are beating...
Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama- A Conversation on Life, Struggles, and Liberation
8/10
Thirteen years, two inspiring women, both radical activists-one conversation. MOUNTAINS THAT TAKE WING is a historically rich and unique documentary about two formidable women who share a profound passion for justice. Through conversations that are intimate and profound, we learn about Davis, an internationally renowned scholar, writer and activist, and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Their shared experience as political prisoners and their dedication to Civil Rights embody personal and political experiences as well as the diverse lives of women doing liberatory cultural work.
George Jackson/San Quentin Prison 1972
Courtesy of The Freedom Archives 1972, 28 min. This extraordinary video is from a 16mm film “work print” made in 1971–1972, and includes interviews with George Jackson, Georgia Jackson (George and Jonathan Jackson’s mother) and Angela Davis, while she was still in the Marin County Courthouse Jail, before her acquittal. We have not been able to identify the other prisoners. As you will see, the film has no titles or other credits. The discovery of such amazing, previously unknown historic materials always leaves us thrilled and in awe, deepening our understanding of those times and affirming the mission of the Freedom Archives.
Wer die Erde liebt
6.1/10
A documentary dedicated to the 10th World Festival of Youth and Students held in East Berlin in the summer of 1973.
Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in The Rock
This vibrant and engaging video profiles the a capella activist group, Sweet Honey in the Rock. Singing to end the oppression of Black people world wide, SWEET HONEY embraces musical styles from spirituals and blues to calypso, and concerns ranging from feminism to ecology, peace and justice. This dynamic video features individual portraits, powerful concert footage and commentary by Angela Davis, Alice Walker and Holly Near.
A Place of Rage
7/10
This celebration of African American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power and feminist movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. (IMDb)
