6 thought-provoking films to watch during Black History Month, according to the Gazette’s in-house movie buff

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Posted February 18, 2022 | By Ocala Gazette Staff

When he’s not writing poetry or news articles for the Gazette, reporter James Blevins is watching or rewatching movies. Hopefully, you’ve been following his enthusiastic previews for the College of Central Florida Ira Holmes International Film Series.

If you ask Blevins to tell you why movies are so important to our culture when most are based on fictional characters, he’ll remind you that films are often the prisms through which we view the “human experience.” They also lead to intellectual sparks—lights guiding us to books, essays and poetry, broadening our understandings of the wider world.

And when it comes to Black History Month, movies become a starting point for many non-Black Americans, like Blevins, to better understand the Black American experience.

Here are six films that helped to do that for our in-house movie buff, maybe they’ll do the same for you:

“Glory” (1989)

Directed by Edward Zwick from a screenplay by Kevin Jarre, which itself was based on two novels—1973’s “Lay This Laurel” by Lincoln Kirstein and 1965’s “One Gallant Rush” by Peter Burchard— “Glory” is about the Union Army’s first Black regiment during the American Civil War.

It stars Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman, Cary Elwes and Denzel Washington, in a performance that would win him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1990.

Available to watch on: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Apple TV, Sling TV and Roku

Further reading after watching: “Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps” by Amy Murrell Taylor; “The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battle for Home, Freedom, and Nation” by Thavolia Glymph; “A Great Sacrifice: Northern Black Soldiers, Their Families, and the Experience of Civil War” by James G. Mendez; “Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments that Redeemed America” by Douglas Egerton

Similar films to check out: “12 Years a Slave,” “Lincoln,” The Birth of a Nation” (2016), “Harriet,” “Selma”

“Moonlight” (2016)

Winning the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2017, “Moonlight” is an American coming-of-age drama, presenting three stages in the life of Chiron, like three stanzas in a poem: his childhood, adolescence and early adult life. Chiron explores the difficulties of his sexuality and identity while being Black in modern day Miami, Florida.

Based on Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unpublished semi-autobiographical play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” the film was written and directed by Barry Jenkins. It stars André Holland, Janelle Monáe, Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali, who won Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Juan, a drug dealer who becomes something of a surrogate father to Chiron during the first stanza of the film.

Available to watch on: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Showtime, Sling TV and Google Play

Further reading after watching: “Indecency” by Justin Phillip Reed; “Don’t Call Us Dead” by Danez Smith; “The Tradition” by Jericho Brown; “Black Unicorn” by Audre Lord; “Play Dead” by francine j. harris

Similar films to check out: “Call Me by Your Name,” “Boyhood,” “Eighth Grade”

“Fruitvale Station” (2013)

Written and directed by Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther”), “Fruitvale Station” tells the true story of Oscar Grant, 22, who on New Year’s Day 2009 was shot and killed by police at the Fruitvale district train station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in Oakland, California, while handcuffed and lying face down on the ground.

The film stars Michael B. Jordan as Grant, with Kevin Durand and Chad Michael Murray playing the two BART police officers involved in Grant’s death, although their names were changed for the film. Melonie Diaz, Ahna O’Reilly and Octavia Spencer also star.

Available to watch on: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Showtime, Sling TV, Roku, Apple TV and Google Play

Further reading: “All American Boys” by Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds; “Dear Martin” by Nic Stone; “On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope” by DeRay McKesson; “They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement” by Wesley Lowery

Similar films to check out: “The Hate U Give,” “Detroit,” “Get Out”

“13th” (2016)

Ava DuVernay’s blistering documentary concerns the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865 during Reconstruction after the end of the American Civil War, which abolished slavery and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for a conviction of a crime.

DuVernay contends in the film that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing.

The film also delves into the suppression of Black Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weighs more heavily on minority communities; and, by the late 20^th Century, mass incarceration affecting communities of color disproportionally, especially American descendants of slavery.

Available to watch on: Netflix

Further reading: “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander; “Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time” by James William Kilgore; “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II” by Douglas A. Blackmon; “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Similar films to check out: “I Am Not Your Negro,” “The Central Park Five,” “What Happened, Miss Simone?”

“Hidden Figures” (2016)

“Hidden Figures” tells the true story of three Black American female mathematicians who worked at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the space race in the early 1960s.

Directed by Theodore Melfi from a screenplay by Allison Schroeder, which was based on the titular book by Margot Lee Shetterly, the film stars Taraji P. Henson as the real-life Katherine Johnson, who was critical to the success of the first and all subsequent U.S. crewed NASA spaceflights.

Octavia Spenser, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons and Mahershala Ali also star.

Available to watch on: Disney+, Hulu, Vudu, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Sling TV and Google Play

Further reading: “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars” by Nathalia Holt; “The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars” by Dava Sobel; “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry” by Neil de Grasse Tyson

Similar films to check out: “42,” “Race,” “Ali”

“Black Panther” (2018)

Directed by Ryan Coogler of “Fruitvale Station,” “Black Panther” is a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It stars the late Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa/Black Panther alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis.

The film received numerous accolades, including seven nominations at the 91^st Academy Awards. Additionally, it was the first superhero film to be nominated for Best Picture. At the box office, “Black Panther” was the first film to hold the number one spot for at least five weekends in a row since James Cameron’s “Avatar” in 2009. Overall, the film earned $1.34 billion worldwide.

For Black moviegoers, “Black Panther” offered “an imagined reality free of the constraints and horrors of white supremacy,” said Nicol Turner Lee, director for the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings in Washington, D.C. Natasha Alford, a film reviewer at “The Grio,” called the film a “movement, a revolution in progress, and a joy to experience all wrapped into one,” as well as “a master class in what it means to be proud of who you are.”

Available to watch on: Disney+, Apple TV, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sling TV and YouTube TV

Further reading: “The Intuitionist” by Colson Whitehead; “Dawn” by Octavia E. Butler; “Akata Warrior” by Nnedi Okorafor; “Freshwater” by Akwaeke Emezi

Similar films to check out: “Captain America: Civil War,” “I Am Legend,” “Avatar”