Kanopy Videos
On-demand streaming video for over 16,000 films including content from the BBC, PBS, and Critereon Collection. Public performance rights for educational use are included.
These videos are searchable via the Cerritos College Catalog or directly through Cerritos.kanopystreaming.com
With a lively backdrop of superheroes, comic books, and animated comics, DRAWN TOGETHER brings together three talented artists--a Sikh, a woman, and an African American--who are challenging the racist stereotyping currently endemic in America through their work.
The documentary provides the rare opportunity to explore the subjects of race, gender, and religion stereotyping through the universally popular medium of comic books and cartoons. DRAWN TOGETHER boldly encourages viewers to unlearn stereotyping, look beyond the obvious, and confront media prejudices--all through an uncommon and inherently engaging everyday source.
Official Selection at over two dozen festivals, including the Los Angeles Women's International Film Festival and CAAMFest.
2018 53 mins.
Marlon Riggs' Emmy-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the evolution of racial consciousness in America.
Loyal Toms, carefree Sambos, faithful Mammies, grinning Coons, savage Brutes, and wide-eyed Pickaninnies roll across the screen in cartoons, feature films, popular songs, minstrel shows, advertisements, folklore, household artifacts, even children's rhymes. These dehumanizing caricatures permeated popular culture from the 1820s to the Civil Rights period and implanted themselves deep in the American psyche.
Narration by Esther Rolle and commentary by respected scholars shed light on the origins and devastating consequences of this 150 yearlong parade of bigotry. ETHNIC NOTIONS situates each stereotype historically in white society's shifting needs to justify racist oppression from slavery to the present day. The insidious images exacted a devastating toll on black Americans and continue to undermine race relations.
1987 59 mins.
In this documentary, Marlon Riggs - Emmy winning producer of ETHNIC NOTIONS - carries his landmark studies of prejudice into the Television Age. COLOR ADJUSTMENT traces 40 years of race relations through the lens of prime time entertainment, scrutinizing television's racial myths and stereotypes.
Narrated by Ruby Dee, COLOR ADJUSTMENT allows viewers to revisit some of television's most popular stars and shows, among them Amos and Andy, The Nat King Cole Show, I Spy, Julia, Good Times, Roots, Frank's Place and The Cosby Show. But this time around, Riggs asks us to look at these familiar favorites in a new way. The result is a stunning examination of the interplay between America's racial consciousness and network primetime programming.
Outstanding Achievement Award, International Documentary Association.
"A cogent and thoughtful survey of Black America as represented by American television, from the demeaning stereotypes of 'Amos 'n Andy' to the subtler, more insidious ones of 'The Cosby Show'" - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"Surveys the strange history of TV's various racial fantasies, taking us from the early days of Amos 'n' Andy to the advertising idyll of The Cosby Show. With its witty visuals and enlightening interviews, Color Adjustment tells us just the story we most need to hear, raises precisely the questions that must be raised, now that the media spectacle shines triumphant all around us." - Mark Crispin Miller, New York University
1991 81 mins.
The Pittsburgh Courier was the leading Black newspaper of the last century. No mere journal of African American life, the Courier was a muckraking crusader in the vanguard of the civil rights movement. Its fourteen national editions had a peak circulation of over three hundred fifty thousand.
With accounts from Courier reporters and employees, and scholars like John Hope Franklin, this new documentary reveals the role of the Pittsburgh Courier in reporting and shaping African American history.
Newspaper of Record: The Pittsburgh Courier won a 2009 CINE Golden Eagle for Feature Length Documentary.
"The video will be a most welcome teaching tool for my course History of Black Pittsburgh. It's an outstanding product. Mr. Love made me aware of aspects of the Courier's history that I had not known about." -- Larry Glasco, University of Pittsburgh professor
"Your chronicle of the Pittsburgh Courier is key to black history." -- Juan Williams, journalist and NPR News analyst
2009 59 mins.
The first documentary to explore the role of photography in shaping the identity, aspirations and social emergence of African Americans from slavery to the present, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY probes the recesses of American history by discovering images that have been suppressed, forgotten and lost.
Bringing to light the hidden and unknown photos shot by both professional and vernacular African American photographers, the film opens a window into lives, experiences and perspectives of black families that is absent from the traditional historical canon. These images show a much more complex and nuanced view of American culture and society and its founding ideals.
Inspired by Deborah Willis's book Reflections in Black and featuring the works of Carrie Mae Weems, Lorna Simpson, Anthony Barboza, Hank Willis Thomas, Coco Fusco, Clarissa Sligh and many others, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY introduces the viewer to a diverse yet focused community of storytellers who transform singular experiences into a communal journey of discovery - and a call to action.
2014 94 mins.
A valuable and colorful examination of 40 years of changing representations of Black masculinity in a significant area of popular culture -- comic books.
Twenty years ago, Marlon Riggs produced an essential documentary critique of the images of African Americans in US television in his award-winning Color Adjustment. Now, comes a documentary on representations of Black masculinity in comic books; a popular culture genre which existed before television and whose reach extends into other areas of cultural production such as movies and animated TV series. In a serious, lively and humorous manner, White Scripts and Black Supermen: Black Masculinities in Comic Books analyzes the subject for the first time and looks at it over a 40 year period.
"Provides a wonderful point of entry, invariably prompting wonderful conversations inside the classroom and beyond. The film pushes us beyond simply recounting this undocumented history but simultaneously complicating the many issues that define this history." - David J. Leonard, Washington State University
2012 55 mins.
This award-winning documentary links everyday black men from various socioeconomic backgrounds with some of Black America's most progressive academics, social critics and authors to provide an engaging, candid dialogue on black masculine identity in American culture. Featuring interviews with bell hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, John Henrick Clarke, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, MC Hammer, and others.
1998 57 mins.
A compelling documentary about lesbians who discriminate against other lesbians based on gender roles. Director Nneka Onuorah takes an in-depth look at the internalized hetero-normative gender roles that have become all too familiar within the African American lesbian and bisexual community.
This film features many queer celebrities, including actress Felicia "Snoop" Pearson from the critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire, and Lea DeLaria from Orange Is the New Black, living daily with opinions about how identity should be portrayed. Onuorah's engaging documentary shines a light on the relationships and experiences within the queer black female community, intersecting race, gender and sexuality.
2015 67 mins.
Hip-Hop was created by urban youth of color more than 30 years ago amid racial oppression and economic marginalization. It has moved beyond that specific community and embraced by young people worldwide, elevating it to a global youth culture.
The ambitious and hard-hitting documentary BLACKING UP looks at the popularity of hip-hop among America's white youth. It asks whether white identification is rooted in admiration and a desire to transcend race or if it is merely a new chapter in the long continuum of stereotyping, mimicry and cultural appropriation? Does it reflect a new face of racial understanding in white America or does it reinforce an ugly history?
Winner of the American Library Association's 2011 Notable Videos for Adults Award
A much needed anecdote to much of the unsophisticated analysis of youth culture that floods our airways and our newspapers. 'Blacking Up' wrestles with the ambiguity and the consequence of cultural borrowing. - Lonnie Bunch , National Museum of African American History & Culture
2010 58 ins.
bell hooks is one of America's most accessible public intellectuals. In this two-part video, extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, she makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism.
In Part One, bell hooks discusses the theoretical foundations and positions that inform her work (such as the motives behind representations, as well as their power in social and cultural life). bell hooks also explains why she insists on using the phrase "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" to describe the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality.
In Part Two, she demonstrates the value of cultural studies in concrete analysis through such subjects as the OJ Simpson case, Madonna, Spike Lee, and Gangsta rap. The aim of cultural analysis, she argues, should be the production of enlightened witnesses - audiences who engaged with the representations of cultural life knowledgeably and vigilantly.
"The issue is not freeing ourselves from representations. It's really about being enlightened witnesses when we watch representations." - bell hooks
Warning: This film contains graphic content and may be upsetting and/or offensive to some people.
1997 61 mins.
Filmmaker Daphne Valerius's award-winning documentary The Souls of Black Girls explores how media images of beauty undercut the self-esteem of African-American women. Valerius surveys the dominant white, light-skinned, and thin ideals of beauty that circulate in the culture, from fashion magazines to film and music video, and talks with African-American girls and women about how these images affect the way they see themselves. The film also features powerful commentary from rapper and activist Chuck D, actresses Regina King and Jada Pinkett Smith, PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill, cultural critic Michaela Angela Davis, and others.
Over the years, The Souls of Black Girls has screened at hundreds of universities and organizations around the country, and earned Valerius the Rising Female Filmmaker Award at the Harlem Int'l Film Festival. In 2015, it aired on ASPIRE TV in association with the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, earning Valerius a trip to the White House as an invited guest of First Lady Michelle Obama.
2008 52 mins.