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California Newsreel joins with a number of film and video distributors in offering resources for the classroom during this period of Institutional closure. If you or your institution have previously licensed a title on DVD from California Newsreel (with or without Site/Local Streaming) and have a distance learning need for that title that you can't meet through your institution's resources, we can send Vimeo-On-Demand "coupon" links for Teachers and facilitators to distribute to each student.
Vimeo will require students to have a free login account (email, facebook, google and password) to use the link, but once logged in these links function as a coupon for a free single user "rental" of the title. Each "coupon" link is unique and supplies may be limited, so please conservatively estimate your need.
To make this request email us at contact@newsreel.org with the following information:
- The title of the film needed
- A proof of purchase (an order number, scanned receipt or we can query your history)
- The number of students you wish to grant access to (links are limited)
- The start and end dates of when access is needed. (Please limit to 3 months or less)
We hope to respond to all requests with a list of links for you to distribute. Links will be good for at least 48 hours from activation and may expire after a month or 2. Please note that this program is experimental and a work in progress. We hope to turn around requests within 24 hours but this policy is subject to change. |
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The California Newsreel series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? examines U.S. health disparities based on race and class. Here is an illustration of how these issues are manifesting during the Covid-19 pandemic. As reported in the New York Times in late December 2020, physician Dr. Susan Moore posted a now widely circulated video that she recorded on her smartphone about the dismissive and disrespectful treatment she received at Indiana University Hospital while dealing with symptoms of Covid-19. It illustrates how Black patients are too often treated by the medical profession. Unfortunately, Dr. Moore has since died due to complications of the Coronavirus. Dennis M. Murphy, CEO of Indiana University Health, issued a press release writing that he was "deeply saddened by her death" ...and "even more saddened by the experience she described in the video." He went on to write, however that staff were working hard to treat a "complex patient in the midst of a pandemic crisis" and that they "may have been intimidated by a knowledgeable patient who was using social media to voice her concerns and critique the care they were delivering." Dr. Moore advocated for herself in a very informed manner and if medical staff were “intimidated” by that, it raises serious questions. |
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- Peabody Award Winner
- John E. O’Connor Award winner The American Historical Association
- Named 2019 Notable Video by the American Library Association
- NAACP Image Award winner
May 19, 2020 would have been Lorraine Hansberry’s 90th birthday. On that date, New York's Town Hall sponsored a special virtual event “Lorraine Hansberry: Black Radical”. Filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain and Hansberry biographer Prof. Imani Perry were in conversation with host Melay Araya. The program is archived.
Lorraine Hansberry wrote the classic play A Raisin in the Sun. Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart (broadcast on PBS' American Masters Series in January 2018) is the first ever feature documentary on her complex life and it explores both her artistic achievements and political activism. The film features interviews with the play’s original cast members, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Louis Gossett, Jr. and Glynn Turman, director Lloyd Richards, producer Phil Rose, supporter Harry Belafonte as well as writer Amiri Baraka along with excerpts from the 1961 Hollywood movie.
Many people only know Hansberry for that achievement but Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart makes abundantly clear that there is much more to know. Filmmakers Tracy Heather Strain and Randall MacLowry combed archives worldwide and had unprecedented access to Hansberry’s personal papers, archives, home movies and photos. Like her writing and activism, the film draws attention to some of the most outstanding issues of the mid-Twentieth Century and beyond (racial justice, colonialism, feminism, class divisions, sexuality) and addresses the role of artists and intellectuals in bringing them to center stage. In addition to being attainable from California Newsreel, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is now available through the educational streaming platforms Kanopy, Alexander Street and Films Media Group. Kanopy is including the film among the "Must-See Films for Every Major". Please visit the film's page on the California Newsreel website for information on public screenings. |
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To help people understand how U.S. government housing policy after WWII produced segregated suburbs and a persistent racial wealth gap - California Newsreel has posted a 30-minute segment entitled How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Created. It is an excerpt from Race - The Power of an Illusion that is available on Vimeo for free video streaming. |
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Since its 2003 PBS broadcast and video release, millions of people have used California Newsreel's series Race – The Power of an Illusion to scrutinize their own deep-seated beliefs about race and racism and explore how our social divisions are not natural or inevitable, but made. A new companion website, www.racepowerofanillusion.org was recently launched. There, educators, trainers and civic leaders will find video clips, discussion guides and lesson plans, transcripts, a "Race Literacy Quiz", interviews with scholars, handouts and other updated resources keeping Race – The Power of an Illusion salient and timely and helping them integrate the series effectively into their classes and programs. A special element for educators features video clips of professors from different disciplines illustrating how they use specific scenes from the series in their courses.
Most recently the site added a post by Prof. Ruha Benjamin referencing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic entitled, “Black Skin, White Masks: Racism, Vulnerability & Refuting Black Pathology”
The companion website was created by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, the American Cultures Center and the Media Resource Center at the University of California-Berkeley in partnership with California Newsreel. |
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Current struggles to make colleges welcoming and relevant for students of color continue movements which swept across campuses fifty years ago. The documentary Agents of Change tells the timely and inspiring story of how successful protests for equity and inclusion led to establishing the first Black and Ethnic Studies departments at two very different universities, San Francisco State (1968) and Cornell (1969). The film offers eye-opening accounts by the young men and women at the forefront of these groundbreaking efforts, which today’s young racial justice activists are boldly carrying forward on college campuses and beyond.
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2019 marked the 30th anniversary of the premiere of Marlon Riggs' groundbreaking documentary Tongues Untied. It was also the 25th anniversary of his untimely death. His classic and widely used film on anti-Black stereotypes Ethnic Notions is regrettably still relevant as recent events indicate. In 2019 programs took place in the US and internationally to recognize Marlon and his body of work. Events will continue into 2020 and will be listed on this Resource page. All of his works are now available for digital licensing. We have created a Marlon Riggs Critical Resource page featuring articles, guides, transcripts and media. We are streaming the 58 minute personal and artistic biography of Marlon Riggs, I Shall Not Be Removed by filmmaker Karen Everett for free. Riggs became the youngest ever tenured professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism. |
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