African-American

Deathrow Notebooks is structured around an interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner, who is on death row in Pennsylvania. Former president of the Association of Black Journalists, Abu-Jamal is a writer and creator of widely broadcast radio programs who continues to write from prison. He was accused of killing a police officer and was convicted in a trial that contained many irregularities. To date, all of his appeals have failed.

Video Data Bank

Danny Tisdale: An Interview

Danny Tisdale is a performance artist from New York City. His performances challenge prevailing ideas of race, assimilation, appropriation and success by offering passers-by the chance to racially change their appearance as a means to achieve greater financial success. The mimicry of museological practices of cataloguing and preservation, display and presentation provides one of a range of rhetorical frameworks upon which Danny Tisdale hangs his practice of social critique.

Videofreex

CBS--Lily and Cleaver Tapes

The Videofreex had been attempting to get their interview with the late Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, broadcast on mainstream television by CBS. However, the Videofreex had been told that their half-inch tapes could never be broadcast because they would cause the picture on viewer's sets to break up, an assertion later proven to be mistaken. In this tape, recorded on March 5th 1971, we see something of the background of the Videofreex's dealing with CBS.

Hermine Freed

Howardena Pindell

Videofreex

Fred Hampton: Black Panthers in Chicago

The Videofreex conducted this interview with Fred Hampton, the Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, in October 1969, just over a month before he was killed by the Chicago police.

Videofreex

Fred Hampton: Chant and Demonstration

Rare footage of a September 1970 rally honoring the late Fred Hampton, Deputy Chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. One of the speaker's leads the audience in a call and response.

Annie Goldson, Chris Bratton

Framing the Panthers in Black and White

In the words of activist Dhoruba Bin Wahad, “Historical and social events are subject to almost instant censorship by those who have better access and control over the medium of communication. It is important that there exist people skilled in the use of the technological instruments of communication who will seek out the real truth behind the headlines and tell it for all to see, know, and hear.”

Art Jones

Know Your Enemy

Through distorted audio and visual representations of interviews with music journalists, this video critiques the mass media’s treatment of the rap group Public Enemy, and accusations that their lyrics are anti-Semitic. This experimental documentary includes scenes from Public Enemy performances and music videos, as well as archival footage of the Black Power movement and Malcolm X. Know Your Enemy details the war being waged by black artists on the battleground of representation, a struggle against forms of expression which are already co-opted.

Video Data Bank

Pat Ward Williams: An Interview

Pat Ward Williams’s socially charged works confront issues of race, often dealing specifically with African-American history and identity. Using a variety of photographic processes, video, audio tapes, assemblage and text, Williams layers meanings and images. Her subjects range from the autobiographical to the public, often combining documentary techniques with personal responses. “When I make photos about my family, I think my family is not a lot different than other peoples’ families, so that is a way people can access my work...

Tony Cokes

No Sell Out

Using a pulsing rock soundtrack and music video-style editing, Tony Cokes combines archival footage of Malcolm X, advertisements, and corporate logos in No Sell Out to provide a scathing commentary on commodity culture.

Marlon Riggs

Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret)

No Regrets features a series of interviews with HIV-positive black men. Through music, poetry and quiet - at times chilling - self-disclosure, five seropositive black, gay men speak of their individual confrontations with AIDS, illuminating the difficult journey African-American men make in coping with the personal and social devastation of the epidemic.

Video Data Bank

Michele Wallace: An Interview

Michele Wallace's attention to the invisibility and/or fetishization of black women in the gallery and museum worlds has made possible new critical thinking around the intersection of race and gender in African American visual and popular culture, particularly in what she has called "the gap around the psychoanalytic" in contemporary African-American critical discourse. Wallace has taught creative writing at several universities, as well as Women’s Studies at the City College of New York.

Art Jones

Media Assassin

An experimental documentary that asks “What is Hip Hop?” Media Assassin deals with popular magazine coverage of the black music scene and efforts to define the new musical forms emerging since the late 80s. The tape focuses on the story of Harry Allen, a former music journalist for The Village Voice, who handled public relations for the rap group, Public Enemy.

Elizabeth Canner, Julia Meltzer

State of Emergency

An investigative documentary on police brutality that uses the Rodney King incident as a springboard to analyze the inner workings of the LAPD under the leadership of former police chief, Daryl Gates. Containing hard-hitting footage of police violence, the tape also depicts communities working against the daily occupation of their neighborhoods. Through interviews with LAPD officers and supervisors, the tape reveals what life is like behind the “thin blue line” and documents a national crisis of violence.

Long Beach Museum of Art

Similiar Differences: Betye and Alison Saar

This tape profiles mother and daughter artists Betye and Alison Saar. Both artists work with sculpture and installation, frequently using found objects, wood, and sheet metal to evoke sacred African-American rituals and images. Similar Differences was produced in concert with their first collaborative exhibition in a decade, Secrets, Dialogues, Revelations, which opened at UCLA’s Wight Gallery in January 1990 and toured nationally in 1992.

African-American

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