Thanks to social media and the rise of creators, independent movies from Black filmmakers are finally getting their just due. Many pioneering African-American directors, like Melvin Van Peebles and Julie Dash, were trailblazers who found money for their fiercely idiosyncratic visions.
They defied expectations and proved that there was an audience for films about black characters as told by black artists. While there are still too few African-American voices being recognized in Hollywood, recent films like Ava DuVernay’s Selma and Spike Lee’s Da Sweet Blood of Jesus speak to a vital tradition of black independent filmmakers. Even controversial creators like Tyler Perry hail from a long line of filmmakers that includes the directors and stars of the “race films” of the 1920s and 1930s.
There remains a glimmer of hope for movie fanatics who cherish the occasional off-beat film. It’s the movies that come to mind when you think of the infamous “bootleg man” selling DVDs of low-budget yet entertaining films, and although these figures aren’t as common as they used to be, there’s one streaming service in particular that’s keeping the energy of bootleg movies alive - Tubi.
Yet, Tubi isn't just another streaming service. Tubi goes beyond the mainstream and offers a diverse selection of content, ranging from indie films and homemade reality shows to iconic Blaxploitation flicks and engaging biopics. But Tubi's significance goes beyond just serving as a vault for cult-favorite movies and television series.
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Groundbreaking Films and Filmmakers
A crucial part of Tubi’s charm is how eccentric most of these movies by up-and-coming filmmakers are. Granted, we know these filmmakers are trying to make what they can with the resources they’ve got. But it’s made for a number of scenes going viral on social media, providing comedic relief in moments the director probably didn’t intentionally have in mind.
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One innovator in particular who has pushed the boundaries of artistry with her Awkward Black Girl YouTube show, which would eventually morph into the hit HBO coming-of-age rom-com series Insecure is Issa Rae.
Another well-known indie flick that also helped shape the teenage years of Black girls everywhere is 1992’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.. What made this film even more impressive and a blueprint for indie films is its lack of technological advancement that is awarded to the filmmakers of today. Still, it followed the life of a teenage Black girl who discovers love, pain, and motherhood in this independent drama by director and screenwriter Leslie Harris. This Black indie film was funded by grants, Harris, and donations from Waiting to Exhale author Terry McMillan and filmmaker Michael Moore.
Here are some examples of groundbreaking films and filmmakers:
- Oscar Micheaux: Widely considered to be the first major African-American filmmaker.
- Kathleen Collins: Her film, Losing Ground, is one of the first feature films written and directed by a black woman and a groundbreaking romance exploring women’s sexuality, modern marriage, and the life of artists and scholars."
- Julie Dash: Her 1991 drama Daughters of the Dust was the first theatrically released independent feature directed by an African-American woman.
- Cheryl Dunye: Her film The Watermelon Woman was the first feature film directed by an openly gay black woman.
These films make me film seen and affirmed. And most of all, they inspire me on my journey to becoming a filmmaker and storyteller. There is truly no greater visionary, in my opinion, than black women storytellers and filmmakers. The films mentioned below offer a wide range of narratives of the lived experiences of black women across the diaspora.
Here are some must-see films by Black filmmakers that offer unique perspectives and challenge norms:
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Alma’s Rainbow (1993)
Ayoka Chenzira’s feature film explores the life of teenager Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) who is entering womanhood and navigating conversations and experiences around standards of beauty, self-image, and the rights Black women have over their bodies. Alma’s Rainbow highlights a multi-layered Black women’s world where the characters live, love, and wrestle with what it means to exert and exercise their agency.
Naked Acts
Set within the demanding and revealing milieu of a low-budget film shoot, Naked Acts tells the story of Cicely, an actress, who has recently lost 57 pounds and has landed her first role in a low-budget art film. She soon learns that the role requires a nude scene. Her dilemma: How to keep her clothes on and keep her part? Cicely launches on a personal journey that unveils a secret she once kept hidden beneath her girth. Along the way, she discovers that emotional nakedness is far more revealing than taking her clothes off could ever be.
A Powerful Thang
This innovative drama, set in Ohio, traces an African American couple’s search for intimacy and friendship. Like her highly acclaimed CYCLES, Davis’s film incorporates animation as well as Afro-Haitian dance in a rich exploration of the lives of African Americans.
Freda
Set in contemporary Port-au-Prince, Freda tells the story of real, living and breathing women who not only have a will to survive, but also have dreams to thrive. The film centers the experience of its eponymous protagonist-a college-aged philosophy student-who is in an intimate relationship Yeshua, an artist. Yeshua is unmoored of the unequal power dynamics and political unrest that shapes daily life-so much so that he is pressed to leave and longs for Freda to accompany him.
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
I hope this film gives space for people to again bring their full selves to it and I hope people allow it to be an experience by having it wash over them, and to think of the seasons in their own lives and the changes in their own lives and relationships. I hope that ultimately, at its heart, it’s a film about life. I hope that it resonates with the people who see it and who need it.
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Suzanne, Suzanne
This poignant documentary profiles a young black woman’s struggle to confront the legacy of a physically abusive father and her headlong flight into drug abuse. After years of silence, Suzanne and her mother are finally able to share their painful experiences with each other in an intensely moving moment of truth.
Losing Ground
Over the course of a summer idyll in upstate New York, the two each experience profound emotional and romantic awakenings. Applying a deft comic touch to a deeply personal exploration of love, race, and gender, Collins crafts a charming, complex tale of personal discovery that, after decades of neglect, has reemerged as a still-fresh landmark of independent cinema.
The Watermelon Woman
While uncovering the meaning of Fae Richards’ life, Cheryl experiences a total upheaval in her personal life. Her love affair with Diana (Guinevere Turner, Go Fish), a beautiful white woman, and her interactions with the gay and black communities are subject to the comic yet biting criticism of her best friend Tamara (Valarie Walker). Meanwhile, each answer Cheryl discovers about the Watermelon Woman evokes a flurry of new questions about herself and her future. At the film’s conclusion, the Watermelon Woman is clearly a metaphor for Cheryl’s search for identity, community, and love.
MÜTTERERDE
Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor's multi-voice video project follows the matriarchal lineages of six black femmes. Müttererde calls for femme forms of ancestral history in the face of the often interrupted historical knowledge of the African diaspora in Europe and elsewhere. What are rituals, teachings and abilities passed on from our matriarchs? How do these inherited skills serve us or inhibit us today?
Spotlight on Recent Indie Films
Consider this viral clip of a woman dodging gunshots by leaning left and right before walking briskly at the shooter with a knife. Oscar worthy? Maybe not. But cinema? So, to help you get into the delightfully peculiar world of Tubi, we’ve scoured its extensive library and have come up with a brief selection of new indie movies that reflect what the app has to offer.
Here are some recent black indie films:
- Jezebel: Based partly on the life of its writer and director, Numa Perrier.
- Night Come On: A stunning drama highlighting how children are often misplaced following a parent’s death.
- Charm City Kings: A drama based on the 2013 documentary 12 O’Clock Boys, which follows young dirt bike riders and their desire to join the 12 O’Clock Boys group, known for impressive bike tricks.
- Building Bridges: Building Bridges is the perfect Black indie film for Gen-Z, who may not have been taught about this pivotal moment in history, which changed the way black children were able to attain their education.
- Cursed: It’s available to watch on YouTube right now for free, making it super easy to check out this eerie Black indie film.
- The Nurse That Saw the Baby on the Highway: Director Alvin Gray was inspired by the viral tale of Carlee Russell, who infamously faked her own disappearance in July 2023 in an elaborate plot to gain the attention of her boyfriend.
Tubi Gems
Here are some of the gems you can find on Tubi:
- No Disrespect: An eccentric drug-dealing crime drama - somewhere between Training Day and Juice if they were both set in Atlanta - shot with a shoestring budget.
- Bissonnet: A gripping tale that brings these harsh street realities to life, as Drea, a young woman, finds herself teetering on the edge of desperation.
- Karma: Karma is about a woman who is kicked out of her home for revealing a big family secret - her father is a predator.
- Dogface: With a disregard for continuity, Dogface invites you on an expedition through Atlanta, following the story of a reformed individual named Hondo as he acquires a haunted trap house.
- The Stepmother: The Stepmother is a classic case of “woman gone mad,” as it’s revealed that Zoey is a drug-addicted psycho who targets widowed men with teenage sons because she seeks vengeance for her troubled past.
- Deadly DILF: In an unexpected twist of fate, the lives of four women take a bewildering turn when they awaken in a locked basement, their pasts erased like an empty canvas.
These films make me film seen and affirmed. And most of all, they inspire me on my journey to becoming a filmmaker and storyteller.
Essential African-American Independent Films
Flavorwire has compiled a list of 50 essential African-American independent films. Here are some examples from the list:
- She’s Gotta Have It: Spike Lee’s first fiction feature, She’s Gotta Have It was shot without retakes on a strict budget of $175,000 over the course of 12 days - but the film went on to gross more than $7 million.
- Killer of Sheep: Written, produced, and directed by Charles Burnett, this slice-of-life drama was, for a long time, impossible to see because the filmmakers didn’t have the music copyright clearances to screen it.
- Middle of Nowhere: The film follows a woman whose husband is sentenced to jail for eight years. She drops out of med school to take care of him.
- Chameleon Street: Chameleon Street is a satire that asks what a black man must do to get ahead.
- Medicine for Melancholy: Writer-director Barry Jenkins’ debut feature film tackles racial integration/miscegenation in modern American society and gentrification in San Francisco.
- Within Our Gates: It’s considered by many to be a corrective to Griffith’s film, in that it shows the violence that accompanied the resurgence of the KKK, particularly during the scenes where Micheaux portrays a lynching and attempted rape.
- The Flying Ace: The Flying Ace was a milestone in that it helped contemporary audiences to see how capable real black actors are in so-called “race films.”
- Cornbread, Earl and Me: A 12-year-old boy, the first in his neighborhood to receive an athletic scholarship, is gunned down after being confused for a wanted criminal.
- Looking for Langston: The film is about the gay African-American experience, using Langston Hughes’ life as symbol of insularity, even within the black community.
- Tongues Untied: The film was famously used by Pat Buchanan to accuse President George H.W. Bush and the National Endowment of the Arts of funding “pornographic art,” due to the film’s frank portrayal of nude men engaged in sexual acts.
- The Story of a Three-Day Pass: While on leave, he shares a romance with a white woman - and the film explores the character’s ensuing guilt and the complexities of a mixed-race relationship during the time period.
- New Jack City: The film became the biggest independently financed movie of the year.
- Daughters of the Dust: Set in turn-of-the-century South Carolina, the film follows three generations of women as they prepare to move north.
- Eve’s Bayou: The film explores how his reputation is ruined based on gossip caused by Eve’s traumatized testimony.
- The Watermelon Woman: It was the first feature film directed by an openly gay black woman.
- Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: In Take One, Greaves auditioned acting students for a fictional drama (called Over the Cliff), while simultaneously shooting the camera crew that was filming the audition, and then filming those filmmakers with a third camera crew.
- Ganja & Hess: Artistically captured, innovative, and with a psychedelic edge, Ganja & Hess was recently remade by Spike Lee as Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.
- Losing Ground: Losing Ground “is one of the first feature films written and directed by a black woman and a groundbreaking romance exploring women’s sexuality, modern marriage, and the life of artists and scholars.”
- Will: Will was an attempt to show what life in ’80s Harlem was like without sensationalism - in this case, through the story of a basketball coach trying to kick a drug habit.
- I Am Somebody: Their peaceful protest was met by the National Guard and treated like a riot.
- The Long Night: It was an attempt at showing a realistic portrait of life in contemporary Harlem.
- A Dream Is What You Wake Up From: A Dream Is What You Wake Up From‘s focus is on women and their role in a black family.
- Finding Christa: Welbon was inspired to create Sisters in Cinema by her lack of knowledge of other African-American filmmakers.
- One False Move: Produced by the same folks who brought us Eraserhead and Rubin and Ed, the thriller (starring Bill Paxton) follows a drug deal gone bad and the police who investigate it.
- Black Girl: Based on J.E. Franklin’s play of the same name, Black Girl has been compared to A Raisin in the Sun.
- Brother to Brother: Brother to Brother won the Special Jury Prize for Drama at Sundance in 2004.
- Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People: The doc focuses on representations of blackness through photography by white and black photographers, and how black subjects were given voices by black photographers.
- Pariah: An aspiring teen poet (Adepero Oduye, in a breakout role) must decide if she should stay with her disapproving family and continue to internalize her feelings of sexual guilt, or leave home and start over.
- Penitentiary: A 1979 blaxploitation film that is a semi-serious attempt at showing what life behind bars was like, Penitentiary was made with grant money during Fanaka’s time at UCLA and was produced by the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers/LA Rebellion.
- Menace II Society: The film managed to evade an NC-17 rating due to its extreme, sensationalized violence.
- A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy: A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy fights stereotypes about sexually active African-American characters through stories told in six narrative episodes.
- Love & Basketball: The romantic drama about two childhood friends/rivals who bond over a mutual love of basketba...
Some of these films are so obscure you will only find them at independent cinemas, film festivals, University film screenings, museums and art institutions like the ones listed below. Follow the directors on social media to find out about future screenings.
- Sisters in Cinema
- Reparation’s Club
- American Cinematheque
- UCLA Film and Television Archives
- AFI Black Image Center
- New Negress Film Society
- Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts
- Noname Book Club
- Kino Lorber Theatrical Releases
- Aspect Ratio
This is just a glimpse into the rich and diverse world of low-budget African American independent films. These films offer unique perspectives, challenge norms, and celebrate the artistry and innovation of Black filmmakers. Explore these hidden gems and discover the power of independent cinema.
