Vintage Black American History & Culture Documentaries

[Black Haven]

Mermaids, Frog Legs, and Fillets (1978)

No Trailer - watch here: Mermaids, Frog Legs, and Fillets | Folkstreams

Long before the advent of hip-hop as a multi-million dollar industry, African Americans were rapping and rhyming in the street, in their neighborhoods, and on the fish market docks in Washington DC. In this film, Lincoln Rorie and Gerry Williams use traditional rhymes--and make up a few new ones--to entertain their customers, sell fish, and make money. Lincoln, from D.C., was hired by Captain White’s fish market boat in 1973, and inspired Gerry, from a fishing family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to use rhyme to sell. It's a remarkable story about a creative tradition in an occupational setting, and about how the expressive spirit takes hold in everyday life.

The film was produced by filmmaker Paul Wagner and folklorists Jack Santino and Steve Zeitlin who were working for the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife which took place on the national mall, about a mile from the fish market. Lincoln Rorie was a participant in a program called DC Folklore, which marked the first time the Festival highlighted its own community of Washington D.C., and the first time they featured a single city as a setting for urban folk culture.

Like we always said we been doing this

 

[K.Dot]

Like we always said we been doing this

I can't believe nikkas thought otherwise

 

[Black Haven]

Wattstax 1972 Production Notes
(Original Stax Records / Columbia Pictures 1973 Press Release for Wattstax.)
Wattstax was a concert – a very special kind of concert, given by a Black-owned recording company. For all of the summer of ’72, every member of the Stax Organization’s staff was involved in the benefit concert for the Southern California community of Watts climaxing the Seventh Annual Watts Summer Festival.

On August 20, more than 100,000 attended the seven-hour show in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Entertainers’ expenses, equipment and promotion and advertising were all paid for by the Stax Organization and the Schlitz Brewing Company. Ticket sales benefited the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation, the Martin Luther King Hospital in Watts and future Watts Summer Festivals. At a dollar a ticket, the seven-hour music fest was the best deal in town. Any town.
What seemed like the entire Black population of Los Angeles County turned out in incredibly uninhibited clothes to spend an equally uninhibited afternoon with the largest number of Black entertainers ever assembled to contribute their talents to benefit their own people.

Wattstax has become a feature-film immortalizing not only those who came to perform, but also, those who came to witness the event and those who live in communities like Watts. There are other films about black people, but few of them have represented the real people of the national Black community until Wattstax.

Wattstax is a film about a very special kind of people, made by very special people, at a very special time. The film is based upon the music of Black America, the stuff upon which much of the recreation of the Black community is based. The rhythms and the lyrics are both explicitly defined by the method used in editing the visual aspects of this feature film.

As a song is performed, the camera moves out to the audience, then breaks away into the community and visual elaboration on the theme of the tune. And Wattstax also reaches the people . . . . . they talk about the subject too.
The opening song, "Whatcha See Is Whatcha Get," moves from the people of the community, through the people’s revolt of 1965, and back to 1972. The concert performances of songs from gospel, to pop, to jazz are used as products of the life of the people.

It soon becomes apparent what kind of an art form Black music is – it is one way the people of the Black community can express their feelings on every aspect of their lives. It is the "Living Word." The songs express divergent opinions on a variety of topics; so do the people we hear from.

The film deliberately uses only one entertainer's point of view on these topics. Richard Pryor and his tragically humorous comments on life, people and situations, serve as another thread through the exposition of the many themes. And there are so many themes in the film. Wattstax is a film about people, and how very special these people are – but one other thing becomes apparent as the people unfold.

The music is the message, but it is also the method. In explaining why Stax gave the concert, the Stax Organization’s board chairman, Al Bell, stated, "This is one of the ways in which Stax thanks the community for its support." As the film unfolds, the viewer realizes that he does not mean merely financial support.

The songs Stax artists record are forged from the lifestyle of the community, and when they are put through a record company, the rhythms and the lyrics become a means of gaining revenue, and thus power. What the Stax Organization has done is take the pain and frustrations of the ghetto, transform it into power, and utilize that power in turning money and strength back in the community.

Wattstax takes its audiences through 300 years in history, through a six-hour concert documenting that history in music. In the framework of a two-hour film, it demonstrates the vitality of a people who have created a rich culture out of the left-overs of a nation and transformed it into power. Wattstax 1972 Production such a underrated film.

 

[IronFist]

Respect to all contributors.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

The Story Of English Program 5 Black On White

Program five in the series Story of English examines the origins of Black English, beginning with the influx of Africans to the American continent caused by the slave trade. In the American south, Gullah is spoken on the Sea Islands near the South Carolina coast. The old plantations bred a different strain and other regions of the south are equally unique. Footage of pidgin English speakers in West Africa is also featured. This video also discusses the roots of rap, the uses of rap in public schools, and jive talk with Cab Calloway -- including showing the efforts of non-African-American entertainers to utilize the style, with mixed success.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Bluesland − A Portrait in American Music explores the blues, with all its poetic irony and sly humour, its eroticism and timeless power. A uniquely creative and highly visual look at American blues, Bluesland travels the expansive landscape of the music, tracing its roots from the beginning of the 20th century through the Mississippi Delta to Louisiana, Texas, Kansas City and Chicago. With rare and memorable footage of the greatest performers, the film follows the music's many tributaries as blues flows into the sophisticated jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie, the rhythm and blues of Louis Jordan and Dinah Washington, and the rock and roll of Chuck Berry and Elvis. Bluesland is a moving, authentic and illustrative overview of the blues -- a must for all music lovers. Masters of American Music is an award-winning television series -- as entertaining as it is educational and memorable -- that celebrate a pantheon of the greatest innovators in Jazz. Individual programmes trace the lives and works of master musicians who defined the course of America's classical music. From its birth in New Orleans, to swing, the big bands, bebop, free Jazz and beyond -- all of it is explored with sensitivity and in unique depth. Over 80 interviews were filmed in the making of the series. Featured artists come to life through these interviews, exciting rare performances, period footage and vintage photographs meticulously reproduced. Both the video and audio content has been restored and remastered in accordance with state-of-the-art specifications.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Part of a one hour color documentary about the women of NC acoustic blues, playing in the so-called "Piedmont" style. Etta Baker, Algie Mae Hinton, Cora Phillips, Odell Thomas, and others. Great music!

A documentary short about Charley Patton included in the box set "The Definitive Charley Patton - 75th Anniversary Edition

B.B. King, reknowned Blues artist and William Lester, director of the Dockery Farms Foundation, take us through the history of Dockery Farms, birthplace of the blues. See where Charley Patton and Son House lived, worked and played.

 

[Black Barbie]

Wow, a lot of stuff to watch, but I'll be reppin y'all for finding these.

 

[xoxodede]

I LOVE Charley Patton. I saw this doc a few years ago and only made me love him even more. Thanks for reposting here!

 

[Bawon Samedi]

Cool thread.

 

[Patriarch]

Dope thread.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

I LOVE Charley Patton. I saw this doc a few years ago and only made me love him even more. Thanks for reposting here!

a few other short but related docus

 

[xoxodede]

Ethnic Notions (1987)

Ethnic Notions is 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 c00ns, 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.

Ethnic Notions has quickly become a mainstay of university, high school, and public library collections. It is a basic audio visual text for American History, Sociology, Black Studies, Anthropology, Social Psychology, Media Studies, and any training program concerned with stereotyping and cross-cultural understanding.

Approaching a complex and delicate subject with great sensitivity, Ethnic Notions equips viewers to view media and other cultural representations with a more critical eye. It's a direct challenge to those who say, "It was just a joke."

 

[xoxodede]

Banished

A hundred years ago, in communities across the U.S., white residents forced thousands of black families to flee their homes. Even a century later, these towns remain almost entirely white. BANISHED tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn their shocking histories.

In Forsyth County, Georgia, where a thousand black residents were expelled, the film explores the question of land fraudulently taken, and follows some descendants in their quest to uncover the real story of their family's land. In Pierce City, Missouri, a man has designed his own creative form of reparation—he wishes to disinter the remains of his great-grandfather, who was buried there before the banishment. And in Harrison, Arkansas, home to the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, a white community struggles with their town's legacy of hate.

By investigating this little-known chapter in American history, BANISHED also takes a contemporary look at the legacy of racial cleansing. Through conversations with current residents and the descendants of those who were driven out, the film contemplates questions of privilege, responsibility, denial, healing, reparations and identity.

What can be done to redress past injustices? What is the ongoing impact of the expulsions on families and communities today? In the stories of black families whose land and livelihood were stolen, the film illustrates the limits of the American legal system and the need for creative forms of repair. By introducing these families and the white communities who forced them out, BANISHED raises the question of responsibility for past wrongs and what is involved in righting them.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light

Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. It is the most comprehensive and compelling documentary existing on the remarkable migration of pioneering African Americans to France and the impact both cultures had on each other. Weaving stories and themes from World War I, the Jazz Age of the 1920s up to the German occupation of WWII, we have compiled a riveting document using rare photographs and stock footage, exciting period music, and stimulating commentary by leading experts.
Driven by the brutal segregation and limitations in the United States, Black American poets, writers, intellectuals, artists, musicians, and entertainers able to get to France were thrilled by their first feeling of absolute freedom. That's where our story begins.

Blue Lion Films is proud to present our one-hour documentary Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light. It is the most comprehensive and compelling documentary existing on the remarkable migration of pioneering African Americans to France and the impact both cultures had on each other.



Weaving stories and themes from World War I, the Jazz Age of the 1920s up to the German occupation of WWII, we have compiled a riveting document using rare photographs and stock footage, exciting period music, and stimulating commentary by leading experts.



Driven by the brutal segregation and limitations in the United States, Black American poets, writers, intellectuals, artists, musicians, and entertainers able to get to France were thrilled by their first feeling of absolute freedom. Here marks the beginning of worldwide assertion of African American culture.



The much-decorated 369th Harlem Hellfighters Infantry Regiment and its sensational marching band introduced jazz to France. As their leader Lt. James Reese Europe said, “We won France by playing music which was ours and not a pale imitation of others.” Paris went wild for Le Jazz after the war.

Young Josephine Baker fired up French audiences because she “embodied this African past and a modern hip kind of Negro jazz musician in one person” yet she evolved into a stylish entertainer, decorated WWII French Résistance spy, and civil rights activist.



Artists were invited to display their works in prestigious art shows and galleries -- unthinkable in the US.



But while the African Americans were basking in their freedom, Afro-French colonial subjects found France far from a paradise. Links made in between Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes and Claude McKay and Négritude Movement founders Aimé Cesaire and Léopold Senghor and others combined to fight for expression of a Black identity that was “as strong, worthwhile and valuable as anything else in any other culture”.



Throughout this film, the social and racial politics of the vibrant African American and French cultures in the 1920s and 30s paints a fascinating backdrop. A short epilogue features post WWII expatriates Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Sidney Bechet and others, and concludes with the situation of African Americans and Black French people in the France today.