Movies: Amiri Baraka

A suicidally disillusioned liberal politician puts a contract out on himself and takes the opportunity to be bluntly honest with his voters by affecting the rhythms and speech of hip-hop music and culture....

Cecil Taylor was the grand master of free jazz piano. "All the Notes" captures in breezy fashion the unconventional stance of this media-shy modern musical genius, regarded as one of the true giants of post-war music. Seated at his beloved and batter...

After breaking ties with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a man marked for death...and it was just a matter of time before his enemies closed in. Despite death threats and intimidation, Malcolm marched on - continuing to spread the word of equal...

A successful black businessman, haunted by his crumbling marriage and identity crisis, is drawn into a psychological game of cat and mouse with a mysterious white woman he encounters on a New York subway....

The poet and painter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is among the world's living monuments to arts and letters. For well over a half century, Ferlinghetti helped shape the currents of poetry and literature with his forceful engagement with society and an ide...

A gritty, provocative true-life story of three friends from the 'hood, Rameck Hunt, Sampson Davis, and George Jenkins, who made a pact in high school to find a way to go to college and then medical school. They not only accomplished this, but they're...

This is a video record of the Buddhist Wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg's apartment. You see Allen, now asleep forever, in his bed; some of his close friends; and the wrapping up and removal of Allen's body from the apartment. You hear Jonas' descript...

James Baldwin was at once a major 20th century American author, a Civil Rights activist and, for two crucial decades, a prophetic voice calling Americans, black and white, to confront their shared racial tragedy....

This video portrait, filmed in the days leading up to Amiri Baraka’s appeal of his 90-day sentence for resisting arrest following an argument in his car outside the 8th Street Playhouse movie theater, documents Baraka at his radio show, at home with ...

An exploration into the life and art of the renowned author of "Last Exit To Brooklyn" and "Requiem For A Dream." Hubert Selby Jr., a self-described "scream looking for a mouth," against all odds, reached international acclaim with his controversial ...

A look at the life and work of American publisher Barney Rosset, who struggled to bring controversial works like "Tropic of Cancer" and "Naked Lunch" to publication....

A young conservative black man, minding his own business, rides a nearly empty subway car. The only other passenger, a blonde vixen looking for trouble, sizes him up. Sexual tension, racial bigotry and righteous fury collide in a razor's edge confron...

Lighter and livelier than the films Jean-Luc Godard had made in France, his U.S. collaboration with Direct Cinema documentarian D. A. Pennebaker was meant to be One A.M., as in “one American movie”; but Godard quit the project and the U.S., where to ...

A black radical's ex-wife and children establish a new family unit with a Caucasian man, but he eventually returns to violently besiege them inside their home....

Documentary about Charles Olson, exploring his life and the significance of Gloucester, Massachusetts....

The story of how Everett Leroy Jones became Amiri Baraka, from his childhood to the mid '60s, is told through interviews recorded in the late '90s....

A report on the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana, in 1972, a historic event that gathered Black voices from across the political spectrum, among them Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, Coretta Scott King, Richard Hatcher, Amiri Bar...

More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and...

The film explores the memory and the legacy of the 60s counterculture through interviews with NY political activists, artists and people on the street. The mosaic of voices heard in the documentary creates a public site for memories, reflections and ...

One in a series of 13 documentaries on renowned American poets produced by the New York Center for Visual History. Described by director St. Clair Bourne as “a narrative performance documentary,” this category-defiant film on the life of poet and wri...