Born American

Feb 25, 2021 — Channel Calendars Giddy up, movie lovers! This month on the Channel, our Black Westerns series leads the charge, highlighting films that have challenged the myths of the Old West to tell the stories of African Americans on the frontier. And...

Dec 12, 2018 — Selection to the registry ensures that “these films will be preserved for all time.”

Apr 9, 2012 — Among the lasting artistic contributions to American culture of the great Paul Robeson (born on this date in 1898) was his beautiful, booming singing voice. In addition to being an actor, activist, and orator, Robeson was a star of the concert hall....

Mar 22, 2017 — A tragedian at heart, Shirley Stoler found her Medea in the role of a glowering bandit on the run in Leonard Kastle’s seedy true-crime drama.

Jul 27, 2023 — The Museum of the Moving Image celebrates fifty years of hip-hop with a twelve-film series.

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Sep 2, 2015 — The cuddliest of the New American Cinema auteurs of the seventies was born on this day in 1929. Hal Ashby’s output from that decade never loses its ability to astonish; bookended by two of the era’s great social-minded comedies, The...

Jun 27, 2011 — A rogue’s gallery of vituperative 1950s vixens and night-world tough-guy gargoyles all coalescing in a constellation of twinkling cold war lights, Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly is a film of a thousand stars. Stars of every sort, size, and description:...

Danielle Amir Jackson is a Memphis-born writer and the former editor of Oxford American. She is writing a book about women in the blues.

May 27, 2025 — A landmark of independent cinema, Charles Burnett’s debut feature captures daily life in Watts, Los Angeles, with a depth and precision that evokes the history of Black American music.