Movies: Haile Gerima

In 1957, Ghana was the first African country to become independent of its colonial rulers, in this case the British. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of what in 1960 became the Republic of Ghana, called on Africans from all over the world to come t...

On a photo shoot in Ghana, an American model slips back in time, becomes enslaved on a plantation and bears witness to the agony of her ancestral past....

The film opens in 1945 with a young boy playing in his Chicago neighborhood, and then follows the adult Jita-Hadi as a returning Marine with heightened political consciousness....

The Ethiopian intellectual Anberber returns to his native country during the repressive totalitarian regime of Haile Mariam Mengistu and the recognition of his own displacement and powerlessness at the dissolution of his people's humanity and social ...

...

In this meditative film the everyday lives of poor Ethiopian peasants are shown using documentary as well as storytelling techniques, with its drama arising out of the timeless yet persistent issues of their lives....

In 1896, Ethiopia, an African nation, largely armed with spears and knives, defeats a well-equipped and organized Italian military bent on colonization....

The story of Dorothy and her husband T.C. He is a discharged Vietnam veteran who thought he would return home to a "hero's welcome." Instead he is falsely arrested and imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. Her life revolves around the welfare offi...

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema....

A woman dressed in a robe, hands bound, is being transported through a barroom into a jail cell, directly outside of which later appears a jury box filled with jurors. Linearity is rejected as space is treated poetically, following the coordinates of...

A documentary on the Wilmington 10, 9 afro-Americans and 1 white woman who were unjustly imprisoned. 4K digital restoration by the Academy Film Archive released in 2021....

A short film made for “Venezia 70 - Future Reloaded”. Thoughts of a man on African cinema...

Part of a multi-platform project highlighted by an hour long documentary about black filmmakers who worked and studied at UCLA between 1965 and the 1990s....

Ashes and Embers is an original screenplay by Haile Gerima, about a Vietnam veteran, who, several years after the war, is struggling to come to terms with his role in the war, and his role as a Black person in America. He survives by working odd jobs...

Haile Gerima and Ryszard Kapuscinski travel around Ethiopia talking to people about their current situations and what needs to be done for a prosperous country....

A film about the Maroons—freed or escaped slaves that created their own communities during slavery. Both stories are examples of Gerima’s driving motivation—sankofa, reclaiming the past in order to move forward....

In the midst of the Black consciousness movement, a basketball player imagines his profession to that of a gladiator. After a series of reflections including his upbringing as a foster child of White Americans, he returns to his origins....