JustFilms / Ford Foundation

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

Adapted from Kahlil Joseph’s renowned video art installation, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a distinctive cinematic experience that mirrors the sonic textures of a record album, weaving fiction and history in an immersive journey where the fictionalized figures of W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey join artists, musicians, Joseph’s family, and even Twitter chats, in a vision for black consciousness.

About the extraordinary doctors and activists—including Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl—whose work 30 years ago to save lives in a rural Haitian village grew into a global battle in the halls of power for the right to health for all.

A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"

Take a stroll down Sesame Street and witness the birth of the most influential children's show in television history. From the iconic furry characters to the classic songs you know by heart, learn how a gang of visionary creators changed the world.

Fashion revolutionary Bethann Hardison looks back on her journey as a pioneering Black model, modeling agent, and activist, shining a light on an untold chapter in the fight for racial diversity.

In the past 40 years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world's largest jailer, and destroyed impoverished communities at home and abroad. Yet drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available today than ever. Where did we go wrong?

A celebration of Dr. Maya Angelou by weaving her words with rare and intimate archival photographs and videos, which paint hidden moments of her exuberant life during some of America’s most defining civil rights moments. From her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her swinging soirees with Malcolm X in Ghana to her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, we are given special access to interviews with Dr. Angelou whose indelible charm and quick wit make it easy to love her.

A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as an Asian-American family in Trump’s rural America fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and generational scars from the Cambodian Killing Fields.

On the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, one fearless black pioneer reconceived a Harlem Renaissance for a new era, ushering giants and rising stars of black American culture onto the national television stage. He was hip. He was smart. He was innovative, political, and gay. In his personal fight for social equality, this man ensured the Revolution would be televised. The man was Ellis Haizlip. The Revolution was soul!

Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

Writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs fights to save historic New York City during the ruthless redevelopment era of urban planner Robert Moses in the 1960s.

Over the past 25 years, Lauren Greenfield's documentary photography and film projects have explored youth culture, gender, body image, and affluence. Underscoring the ever-increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, portraits reveal a focus on cultivating image over substance, where subjects unable to attain actual wealth instead settle for its trappings, no matter their ability to pay for it.

A hybrid doc/narrative following Tony winning performer and comedian Sarah Jones. As a mixed-race Black woman in America, Sarah, alongside the multicultural characters she's known for, explores her own personal relationship to one of the most relevant issues in our current cultural climate: the sex industry, and the surprisingly diverse range of people whose lives it touches. Through interviews and monologues, this film poses the question: how can we as a society have a healthy relationship to sex, power, race and our economy, without exploitation or stigma? The goal is not to prescribe solutions, but to highlight the human faces and voices at the center of this subject.

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.

For one week in February 1968, Johnny Carson gave up his chair to Harry Belafonte, the first time an African-American had hosted a late night TV show for a whole week.

The timely biopic focuses on John Lewis’ longstanding prominence as a civil rights champion and his continuing crusade for racial and social equality. The documentary illuminates the 80-year-old Congressman’s life as it chronicles the moments on the extraordinary journey that have shaped his place in history and make him such a galvanizing figure today as protests circle the globe. Lewis’ schedule has increased ten-fold as he has become the go-to figure for TV news shows, podcasts and newspapers and magazines from the Washington Post to Vanity Fair, commenting on and leading the way forward through today’s worldwide protests and demonstrations.

Amid the surge in anti-trans legislation that Chase Strangio battles in the courtroom, he must also fight against media bias, exposing how the narratives in the press influence public perception and the fight for transgender rights.

Direct cinema pioneer Frederick Wiseman takes an in-depth look at the preeminent American university during a fall semester that saw a vigorous debate taking place over tuition hikes, budget cuts, and the future of higher education in the United States.

Intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of poetry take us on a journey through the dreamscape of legendary queer poet Nikki Giovanni as she reflects on her life and legacy.