Films with: Pollard, Sam

4 little girls

"When a bomb tears through the basement of a black Baptist church on a peaceful fall morning, it takes the lives of four young girls; Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins. This racially motivated crime, taking place at a time when the civil rights movement is burning with a new flame, could have doused that flame forever. Instead it fuels a nation's outrage and brings Birmingham, Alabama to the forefront of America's concern."--Container.

DVD 2104

Bamboozled

In a searing parody of American television and racial attitudes a young African American network executive, under pressure from his white boss, creates a minstrel show, hoping that it will fail and that he will be released from his network contract -- but the TV show becomes both a hit and the subject of much controversy.

DVD 1127

Eyes on the prize

Vols. 1-3 tell the story of America's civil rights years from 1954 to 1965; vols. 4-7 examine the new America from 1966 to 1985, from community power to the human alienation of urban poverty.

DVD 5909

I'll make me a world

I'll make me a world profiles African American musicians, artists and authors throughout twentieth century America.

DVD 12242

If God is willing and da creek don't rise

This follow-up to director Spike Lee's documentary, When the levees broke: a requiem in four acts, focuses on the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, five years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Bookending stories of individual heartache and perseverance are two momentous events: the historic 2010 Super Bowl victory by the New Orleans Saints and the disastrous British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

DVD 8309

Jump at the sun

A biography of African American author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, the first black woman to enter the American literary canon.

DVD 10608

Rise and fall of Jim Crow

A four-part series offering the first comprehensive look at race relations in America between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement presenting the context in which the laws of segregation known as the "Jim Crow" system originated and developed.

DVD 11492

Slavery by another name

Challenges one of America's most cherished assumptions, the belief that slavery in the U.S. ended with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, by telling the harrowing story of how, in the South, a new system of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force.

DVD 8854

Soundbreaking stories from the cutting edge of recorded music /

Music has been a constant in human history, an intermingling of voice and instrument that for all its local variation and increasing sophistication nevertheless endured in more or less the same form for centuries. Then came recording--and music was forever transformed. Soundbreaking, an eight-part event television series, traces this ongoing sonic revolution, and explores the nexus of cutting-edge technology and human artistry that has created the soundtrack of our lives. Featuring more than 160 original interviews with some of the most celebrated recording artists, producers, and music industry pioneers of all time, Soundbreaking charts a century's worth of innovation and experimentation, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at the birth of brand new sounds. From the Beatles' groundbreaking use of multi-track technology to the synthesized stylings of Stevie Wonder, from disco-era drum machines to the modern art of sampling, the series highlights the dynamic tension between the artificial and the natural--between the man-made and the god-given--and explores the way in which that tension has continuously redefined not only what we listen to and how we listen to it, but our very sense of what music is and can be. In the end, Soundbreaking makes us hear the songs we love in a whole new way, and illuminates the sonic alchemy by which the music we listen to becomes a fundamental part of who we are.

DVD 12132

Talk : race in America

A two-hour film about "the talk' that parents have with their children of color (primarily boys) to teach them how to act around the police in order to remain safe.

DVD 12390

Twelve disciples of Nelson Mandela

"Confronted with the death of his stepfather, director Thomas Allen Harris embarks on a journey to understand the man who raised him, Pule Benjamin Leinaeng ("Lee") - an ANC foot-soldier who sacrificed his life for the freedom of his country. As part of the first wave of South African freedom fighters, Lee and his comrades left their homeland in 1960 to broadcast to the world the brutality of apartheid and to raise support for the African National Congress ("ANC") and its leaders, Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo. This film is an intimate tale about an African-American family, the anti-apartheid movement and the quest for reconciliation between a father and son."--IMDb.com.

DVD 8989

When the levees broke a requiem in four acts /

Four acts document distinct perspectives on the pivotal events that preceded and followed Katrina's passage through New Orleans, a catastrophe during which the divide between race and class lines has never been more pronounced.

DVD 4660