black cinema is everything
my top four niche, hard to find, and criminally underrated movies by Black directors
As we wind down from Black History month and move into Black History year, I have compiled a short list of movies made by Black filmmakers that I love and wish more people were watching. At the end I will link further reading and essays on Black cinema so y’all can do some homework!
I usually keep all of my film reviews on Letterboxd but now that I’m on Substack I think it’s time to turn those reviews into long form essays! All the people that follow me on Letterboxd are my friends so this will be a new audience, which I’m very excited about. I am by no means a professional film critic, just a film lover who also happens to be a writer. Growing up, if I wasn’t reading a book or writing a poem, I was probably watching a movie alongside my family and have carried an appreciation for film well into my adulthood.
It is important to note that while most of these films are accessible online in some format, a couple of them are much easier to watch if you have a DVD or VCR player at home. Take this as a sign to start collecting physical media!
And now… onto the list!
Girl 6 (1996) dir. by Spike Lee
Starting off with my favorite movie on the list! I was first introduced to Girl 6 while reading a bell hooks book. The book, Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies, is a collection of essays on film originally published in 1996. bell hooks describes this film in the introduction of her book as Spike Lee’s first film to display “…a complex awareness of sexual politics”1. This gave me pause because, like many people who weren’t alive during its initial release, I had absolutely no idea of this film’s existence. A Spike Lee film about sexual politics? That I had never heard of? I immediately put the book down and tried to figure out where I could watch this movie. Imagine my surprise when I found out it is Spike Lee’s only film that is completely inaccessible online. You can’t stream, rent or buy it. You can’t even find a bootleg copy on a sketchy website. The first time I watched it was on an app called Plex, and then the film was unavailable a week later. For an entire year after that first watch, I waxed poetic to any and every person who was willing to listen to me ramble about this Spike Lee joint no one has heard of.
Imagine this: a film about a Black woman in the entertainment industry who becomes a phone sex operator. Original soundtrack done by Prince. A short cameo of Quentin Tarantino playing a creep nasty casting director. Naomi Campbell. Madonna. Cinematography by Malik Hassan Sayeed two years before he did Belly (1998).
This film is stacked, and yet I have never seen it come up in conversations about Spike Lee’s best work. It wasn’t until after I watched the film in its entirety that I realized why this was.
Ultimately, and more importantly than its impressive credits, Girl 6 is about the double racism and misogyny (misogynoir) that Black women face in the entertainment industry. It’s about desire and fantasies. It’s subversive. It holds a mirror up to every single person in the industry who may watch it. I could be wrong, but I think this is the reason for it being scrubbed off the internet. Honest portrayals of the treatment of Black women are never popular, and it is unfortunate that this film does not have a more prominent place in the Black-American film canon. If you want to read a full Black feminist critique of the film, I would suggest reading bell hooks’ essay featured in the book I mentioned earlier.
Where to watch: I am very grateful that I was given a VHS copy of this movie on my birthday last year, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to watch it at all. I suggest searching online for a physical copy, checking out thrift stores or record stores that sell dvds, and keeping tabs on your local movie theaters for any upcoming screenings!
To Sleep With Anger (1990) dir. by Charles Burnett
I’m due for a rewatch on this one but wow did it leave a lasting impression on me. This film is surreal. It is poetry in motion. It’s unsettling, in a sort of dreamlike and beautiful way. In a way that all honest films about the spirit of Black folks are. Watching To Sleep With Anger feels like being in a poem, or a spiritual rather. It’s just, very very good. I don’t have many other words to say other than that right now.
By the time it was over I never wanted the story to end.
Where to watch: Free on Tubi!!!
Naked Acts (1996) dir. by Bridgett M. Davis
Now, this one kind of blindsided me with its excellence. I randomly stumbled upon it while reading an article on Letterboxd a couple weeks ago and immediately stopped what I was doing to watch it. I found it, put it on, and was forever changed. The depth of this film shook me to my core and truly stands out as a triumph of Black independent filmmaking.
Similarly to Girl 6, Bridgett M. Davis’ Naked Acts discusses the sexualization of Black women in the entertainment industry and explores how that hyper-sexualization has a lasting impact on the psyche. As they say, the body does in fact keep score. Where Lee’s film is sensational, star-studded and provocative, Davis’ film feels very raw and down to earth. The best word I could use to describe this is just real.
Naked Acts is being released for the first time right now on digital and I’m not going to spoil the full plot so y’all better get out there and watch it! While you’re at it, I highly recommend checking out Black Film Archive by Maya S. Cade as she had a role in the historic restoration of this film.
Where to watch: I watched it for free on Kanopy, which you can subscribe to with your library card! It’s also available on DVD/Blu-Ray!
Drylongso (1998) dir. by Cauleen Smith
Cauleen Smith gives a tender yet honest snapshot of Oakland, California in this independent film about memory and photography as vital archival work. The film, shot on location, very honestly addresses the collective grief of a community without becoming “trauma porn” like some mainstream movies about Black life during the late 90s and early 2000s *cough cough Tyler Perry cough cough*. I think there are so many cities left out of the conversation when it comes to art and cultural impact so I was excited to discover this film about a place as complex and unique as Oakland. A place that I love and call home!
This film is magical in the way that it holds the disembodied and says, “I love you, you will not be forgotten.” Like pressing flowers between tattered pages in an old journal, clasping the covers together in hopes of each petal one day raising up and realizing they colored every sheet with their existence. This effort of preservation is where the magic of Drylongso lives; in the act of remembering and re-membering.
Like Naked Acts, this film is a triumph of Black independent filmmaking. And directed by a woman too!
A beautiful piece of art!
Where to watch: Criterion Channel <3
Well… that’s my list! Very short, I know, but I wanted to limit it to a top four similar to the Letterboxd format. Let me know in the comments if you’ve seen any of these films and what your thoughts on them are!
Hopefully this is the first of many film related pieces I publish on my page :,)
Further reading and resources:
Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies by bell hooks
Visitation: The Conjure Work of Black Feminist Avant-Garde Cinema by Jennifer DeClue
Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the “Frenzy of the Visible” by Linda Williams
Black Film Archive on Substack by Maya S. Cade
Reel to Real: Race, Class and Sex at the Movies. bell hooks, 1996.
I love this and will go on a hunt for these movies😆
To Sleep With Anger is a great film. You were right about it having a very spiritual feel to it. It felt like I was watching a dream. I like how it depicted the often harmful favoritism Black families give to their children. How things like this can often lead to self fulfilling prophecies. I loved how Danny Glover’s character served as the mischievous catalyst character during the whole film. He really was instigating tf out that family 😂