Sam Pollard

Inside Man

When an armed, masked gang enter a Manhattan bank, lock the doors and take hostages, the detective assigned to effect their release enters negotiations preoccupied with corruption charges he is facing.

Private Resort

Chasing women for the weekend at a luxurious Miami resort, teen buddies Ben and Jack get more than they bargained for after crossing paths with a crafty criminal.

The Perfect Neighbor

Police bodycam footage reveals how a long-running neighborhood dispute turned fatal in this documentary about fear, prejudice and Stand Your Ground laws.

Jungle Fever

A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.

Juice

Four Harlem friends -- Bishop, Q, Steel and Raheem -- dabble in petty crime, but they decide to go big by knocking off a convenience store. Bishop, the magnetic leader of the group, has the gun. But Q has different aspirations. He wants to be a DJ and happens to have a gig the night of the robbery. Unfortunately for him, Bishop isn't willing to take no for answer in a game where everything's for keeps.

Clockers

Strike is a young city drug pusher under the tutelage of drug lord Rodney Little. When a night manager at a fast-food restaurant is found with four bullets in his body, Strike’s older brother turns himself in as the killer. Detective Rocco Klein doesn’t buy the story, however, setting out to find the truth, and it seems that all the fingers point toward Strike & Rodney.

Girl 6

A struggling actress in New York City takes a job as a phone sex operator.

Bamboozled

Frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea, producer Pierre Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of in an attempt to get fired: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.

Surviving the Game

A homeless man is hired as a survival guide for a group of wealthy businessmen on a hunting trip in the mountains, unaware that they are killers who hunt humans for sport, and that he is their new prey.

Mo' Better Blues

Talented but self-centered trumpeter Bleek Gilliam is obsessed with his music and indecisiveness about his girlfriends Indigo and Clarke. But when he is forced to come to the aid of his manager and childhood friend, Bleek finds his world more fragile than he ever imagined.

Acorn and the Firestorm

For 40 years, the community-organizing group ACORN advocated for America’s poorest communities, while its detractors accused it of promoting the worst of liberal policies. Riding high on the momentum of Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008, ACORN was at its political zenith when a hidden-camera video sparked a national scandal and brought it crashing down. The story involves voter fraud, a fake prostitute, and the rise of Breitbart.com.

Maynard

Director Sam Pollard constructs a portrait of charismatic trailblazer Maynard Jackson, who became Atlanta’s first black mayor in 1973. The son of pastors raised in the segregated South, Jackson entered college at 14 and took office at 35. During his three-term tenure, he led the city through the traumatic Atlanta child murders scare and triumphantly hosted the 1996 Olympics, all while championing racial equality. Family and colleagues, including Bill Clinton, Andrew Young and Al Sharpton, tell the epic story of a dynamic leader and his legacy of honor and progress.

LIFT

Lift shines a spotlight on the invisible story of homelessness in America through the eyes of a group of young homeless and home-insecure ballet dancers in New York City and the mentor that inspires them.

Natchez

Filmmaker Suzannah Herbert takes a sharp look at the American South’s unreconciled history through a Mississippi town that mixes antebellum tourism with a community deeply divided over its past. With an unflinching lens, the film captures the debates, memories, and tensions that are building toward a reckoning.

Tutu

Through never-before-seen archival footage and first-hand accounts of those who knew him best, the film traces Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s rise as the voice of the oppressed, guided by faith, hope and an understanding of the power of forgiveness.

D. Wade: Life Unexpected

For a decade, Dwayne Wade intimately documented his life and career with a film crew. The result is a remarkably candid portrait of one of the greatest NBA players of all-time.

Remote Area Medical

Amid the nation’s ongoing debate over health care reform, this bracing new documentary examines the everyday realities of Americans who lack access to affordable medical treatment. Filmed during three days in the operation of a “no-cost” clinic set up annually at Bristol, Tennessee’s NASCAR speedway, Remote Area Medical documents the range of medical care the eponymous organization provides to low-income patients in the heart of Appalachia.

Teaching America

Explores the battle around the teaching of African-American studies from inside the classroom, focusing on the transformative journeys of the Arkansas students, teachers and families who are part of the very first, inaugural classes of students taking AP African-American Studies nationwide.

Full Circle: The First All Black Everest Ascent

An all-Black team sets out to summit Mount Everest not just to make history, but to redefine what it means to climb and who belongs in the mountains.

Body and Soul

A young man struggles to become a boxing champ, but success blinds him. It is only through the love of his girlfriend that he is brought back to reality.

Two Trains Runnin'

The search of several young, white men for blues singers who have been missing for decades coincides with the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in the 1960s.

4 Little Girls

On September 15, 1963, a bomb destroyed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls who were there for Sunday school. It was a crime that shocked the nation--and a defining moment in the history of the civil-rights movement. Spike Lee re-examines the full story of the bombing, including a revealing interview with former Alabama Governor George Wallace.

Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is a 2010 documentary feature film written and directed by Jeff Reichert. The film explores the history and the ethical, moral and racial problems raised by redistricting, i.e., the drawing of boundaries of electoral districts in the United States.Gerrymandering covers the history of the redistricting practice, how it is used and abused, how it benefits the two major major political parties, Democrats and Republicans. The documentary draws on the perspectives from different individuals, reporters, pundits and politicians.

Ol' Dirty Bastard: A Tale of Two Dirtys

The untold story of the man and the musician who made an immense cultural impact across just a few short years. Having gained exclusive rights to a never-before-seen personal archive shot by his wife alongside access to his closest friends and family, the doc is described by the filmmakers as a culture-defining special that humanizes ODB as a man, a father and a husband like never before. It explores how Russell Tyrone Jones created Ol' Dirty Bastard, a Hip Hop alter ego superhero that would ultimately consume him.

American Experience

TV's most-watched history series brings to life the compelling stories from our past that inform our understanding of the world today.

American Masters

American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and others who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States.

Independent Lens

This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers and featuring unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history.

The Blues

The Blues (2003) is a seven-part documentary series produced by Martin Scorsese that explores the history and influence of blues music. Each episode, directed by a different filmmaker, traces a unique aspect of the genre’s evolution—from its African roots to its global impact. Originally airing on PBS, the series includes Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home, Wim Wenders’ The Soul of a Man, Richard Pearce’s The Road to Memphis, Charles Burnett’s Warming by the Devil’s Fire, Marc Levin’s Godfathers and Sons, Mike Figgis’ Red, White and Blues, and Clint Eastwood’s Piano Blues.

Bill Russell: Legend

Winningest NBA champion and civil rights icon Bill Russell builds a larger-than-life legacy on and off the court in this biographical documentary.

Katrina: Come Hell and High Water

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, survivors reflect on the disastrous storm that forever changed their lives and the systemic inequities it exposed.

Photographer

Photographer will tell the intensely personal stories of the world’s greatest visual storytellers and artists, from how they found themselves behind a camera to how they dedicate themselves to the endless pursuit of perfecting their craft.

Why We Hate

Explore one of humanity’s most primal and destructive emotions – hate. At the heart of this timely series is the notion that if people begin to understand their own minds, they can find ways to work against hate and keep it from spreading.

Eyes on the Prize

The definitive story of the Civil Rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberation continue to be felt today.

Tiger

A revealing look at the rise, fall, and epic comeback of global icon Tiger Woods. The series paints an intimate picture of the prodigy whose dedication and obsession with the game of golf not only took his fame and success to new heights, but also down a dark, spiraling road that eventually led to a legendary sports comeback, culminated by his victory at the 2019 Masters.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

A landmark four-part series exploring segregation from the end of the civil war to the dawn of the modern civil rights movement. Lynchings and beatings by night. Demeaning treatment by day. And a life of crushing subordination for Southern blacks that was maintained by white supremacist laws and customs known as "Jim Crow." It was a brutal and oppressive era in American history, but during this time, large numbers of African Americans and a corps of influential black leaders bravely fought against the status quo, amazingly acquiring for African Americans the opportunities of education, business, land ownership, and a true spirit of community.

Hostages

On November 4, 1979, Iranian student activists stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking over 60 Americans hostage. What was planned as a 48-hour sit-in to protest American imperialism, ballooned into an international crisis and 24/7 media event that would last 444 days. With never-before-seen archival footage and revelatory new interviews with the American hostages and Iranian hostage-takers alike, the series is a gripping chronicle of one of the most dramatic international deadlocks in American history, a deep dive into the geo-political history that led to the crisis, and an exploration of the political fallout that reverberates today.

If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise

Spike Lee returns to New Orleans five years after Katrina to see how the ambitious plans to reinvent the Crescent City are playing out.

Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children

This docuseries explores the period between 1979 and 1981 when at least 30 African-American children and young adults disappeared or were murdered in Atlanta, Georgia.