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AFROPOP: THE ULTIMATE CULTURAL EXCHANGE celebrates Africa's cultural and historical growth through six insightful films. These films, each introduced by acclaimed actor Idris Elba, explore the complex lives of contemporary Africans, both on the continent and abroad. The productions include an examination of the efforts of African AIDS activists, a profile of two young South African hip-hop disc jockeys, the touching story of one Cape Town boy's love for opera music and a look inside the blossoming Nigerian film industry.
2008
Filmmaker Regi Allen explores black identity in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal; "10 Days in Mississippi" focuses on the relationship between America and Africa.
The evolution of the Nigerian movie industry, the third largest film producer in the world.
A 13-year-old boy follows his passion for opera in Hermanus, South Africa, opening for established opera singers from Cape Town.
South African filmmaker Weaam Williams focuses on hip-hop's power to instigate change; "Close Strangers" analyzes the history of the Ussher Fort in Ghana.
Two female hip-hop disc jockeys from conservative backgrounds forge new social realities between black and white and males and females.
AIDS activists from Nigeria, Uganda, Burkina Faso and Zambia; two HIV-positive women fight discrimination; doctor works tirelessly for HIV-infected children.
2011
A filmmaker visits Haiti six weeks after the earthquake; Pé Yves, leader of the Ra Ra movement.
Rezoning threatens murals painted on roll-down gates in Harlem; dancer Nora Chipaumire.
Three artists make their way around the Jamaican music scene. With Lee "Scratch" Perry, Sly Dunbar, and Robbie Shakespeare.
Three artists in Jamaica.
A Malian mother seeks asylum in the United States to protect her two-year-old daughter from female genital cutting.
2009
Three boxers from Bukom, a tiny district in Ghana's capital Accra, compete in Europe and the U.S.
Six hundred evacuees of Hurricane Katrina end up at a military installation in the Utah desert.
Frustrated by the violence and drug abuse in her Atlanta neighborhood, Sylvia Dorsey, 17, explores her ancestral home in Ghana.
Hip-hop group Rebel Soulz interacts with local artists in Sierra Leone.
2012
The band Fishbone's history, its influence and struggle to stay together.
An entrepreneur returns to his homeland of Mali and starts a business building solar panels.
Thomas Allen Harris searches for his spiritual ancestors in Africa and Brazil.
Calypso Rose, the ambassador of Caribbean music, travels from Paris to Tobago, then New York and Africa.
Ghana's 2008 presidential elections.
2014
Doin' It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC," explores the history, culture and social impact of New York's summer b-ball scene, widely recognized as the worldwide mecca of the sport, where pickup basketball is not just a sport but a way of life.
A 68-year-old artist and a 32-year-old tap dancer develop a friendship that bridges continents and generations.
Issa Sesay awaits trial in the UN International Special Court following the Sierra Leone civil war and massacre.
Five villagers talk about life on the beach village of Lakka in Sierra Leone.
The Curacao youth baseball team strives to maintain their winning streak at the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.
A group of men raised in the U.S. and Canada are repatriated to Haiti for crimes ranging from violent assaults to petty theft.
2016
As immigration and refugee concerns dominate the news, AfroPoP takes on migration and asylum head on. The series begins its journey on the Saharan shores of the Atlantic Ocean as an African immigrant sets off to Europe with buoyant expectations of a better life.
Hundreds of musicians from around the world converge on Trinidad to compete in the National Steelband Panorama.
Tchinda sells coxinhas by day and runs a local bar in São Vicente, a small Cape Verdean island.
The murder of a teenager may jeopardize the future of First Fridays, a community gathering in downtown Oakland, Calif., on the first Friday of each month.
Game developers create African superheroes to inspire Kenyan youth; an engineer builds drones to combat Kenya's poaching problem; two punk rock bands in Nairobi.
Game developers create African superheroes to inspire Kenyan youth; an engineer builds drones to combat Kenya's poaching problem; two punk rock bands in Nairobi.
2017
The first black expedition to Denali, aka Mt. McKinley, North America's highest peak.
The film features music performances from Rwanda's top traditional and commercial artists in music and dance, interwoven with poignant interviews from genocide survivors and perpetrators who sit side-by-side; plus Rwandan leaders and legends.
Papa Jah, a humble Haitian gardener, has lived in the Bahamas for 40 years. As his marginalized community faces a strict new deportation policy and growing xenophobia in the Bahamas, he returns to Haiti, to reunite with his 103 years old father and the land he left behind.
Every day during exam season, as the sun sets over Conakry, Guinea, hundreds of school children begin a nightly pilgrimage to the airport, petrol stations and wealthy parts of the city, searching for light. This evocative documentary tells the story of these children's inspiring struggle for education in the face of the country's own fight for change.
The film aims to comment on the lives of the children whose lives were drastically changed by the aftermath of the hurricane and the flooding that followed it, as well as on the role of those who experienced the events on television from the safety of their own living rooms.
In Ethiopia's Omo valley, children are being killed horrifically under an ancient tradition known as 'mingi'. Teeth growing in a certain order can bring a child a death sentence. One young tribesman strives for change through education and adopting the cursed children. But challenging tribal superstition isn't easy and as he battles to save lives, things are not all that they seem.
2015
This lyrical film follows Mutinta Mweemba, a 28-year-old subsistence farmer living in a polygamous marriage. After learning she is HIV positive and pregnant, Mutinta sets out to keep her unborn child virus-free and to break the cycle of transmission.
A women's football street tournament is organized for the first time in Senegal in 2009.
Eritrean journalist-activist Meron Estefanos talks to hostages in Egyptian camps on her online radio program, recording their pleas for help and asking family members to raise money for their release.
Artist Sanford Biggers; Kenyan-born artist and sculptor Wangechi Mutu.
Two personal accounts of homophobia and discrimination in Jamaica.
2013
Eliaichi Kimaro examines multiracial identity and the ties children have to their parents' cultures.
Three friends from Durban, South Africa, refuse to move when the government begins to evict shack dwellers outside the city.
Two filmmakers discover people who claim to be enslaved in Polisario-run refugee camps in the Western Sahara.
2018
Black Panther Woman details the journey of Marlene Cummins, a member of the Australian Black Panther Party. Through Marlene's tale, audiences become privy to the fascinating yet little-known story of the indigenous Australian struggle for equality and how young people in that nation formed a Black Panther Party chapter in the 1970s. Interwoven with her memories of the Party and activism, Marlene also details her own struggle with addiction, the refuge she found in the arts and her own quest to fight for women's rights within the Black Panther Party.
Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt is an intimate portrait of a self-taught African-American visual artist and musical performer from Birmingham, Alabama. After a childhood beating by schoolmasters left him immobilized, Lonnie began creating when his mother gave him "art materials" to keep him busy. Influenced by his grandfather who created things out of found objects, Lonnie saw that he could use any type of material as a source for making beauty in a cruel world. An observed portrait, complimented by an intimate interview with the artist, Lonnie Holley: The Truth of the Dirt documents a man who sees beauty in what others step on, step over, and leave behind.
Through the stories of Johanna and Cristina, Between 2 Shores offers viewers a poignant look at the lengths families will go to stay together and at the daily battles faced by many immigrants.
Ten Days in Africa is an insightful and humorous look at the filmmaker's journey to West Africa. Allen, an African-American, travels to three countries-Ghana, Senegal and Côte D'Ivoire-with a group of other African-Americans seeking to learn more about Africa and go beyond the stereotypes about the continent, exploring the differences and similarities between Africans and African-Americans along the way.
Offering a close examination of the missteps made in Haiti after the earthquake, Fatal Assistance provides audiences with a scathing indictment and sobering reality on the global aid policies that failed Haiti in the earthquake's aftermath.
2021
The story of Gloria Allen, a 75-year-old Black transgender activist who began a charm school for homeless trans youth.
Tamara Dawit pieces together the mysterious life of her aunt, a 23-year-old from an upper-class family who disappears after becoming a communist rebel with the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party.
A curated selection of episodes from "Professional Black Girl," a web series covering everyday topics from hairstyles to personal fashion.
Films include "Betye Saar: Taking Care of Business," "Man of the People" and "Elena."
Exploring Afrobeats and Bakoso in Santiago de Cuba with DJ Jigue, and the technology, culture and landscape that has shaped this Afro-Caribbean fusion.
2020
"My Friend Fela" offers a new perspective on Nigerian musician Fela Kuti by biographer Carlos Moore; the animated short "Birth of Afrobeat" details how Nigerian drummer Tony and his partner Fela Kuti created the Afrobeat genre.
An African immigrant woman living in Istanbul faces cultural challenges as she pursues her dreams.
A daughter's quest to understand her father's collaboration with three corrupt government leaders and war criminal Charles Taylor.
A woman fights to expose the history of an illegal 19th century slave-trading post in the Brazilian rainforest.
A black family, the Anti-Apartheid Movement and a quest to reconcile a father and son; The United Order of Tents.
2023
The history and legacy of choreographer-dancer-director Bill T. Jones' 1989 ballet "D-Man in the Waters."
The life, career and global impact of musician and activist Angélique Kidjo.
Despite the hardships of legalized racism, Alabama artist Bill Traylor produced a body of work still exhibited in museums and collections worldwide.
A Mozambican man's commitment to preserving the art of Mapiko, the traditional masked dance performed by the Makonde men of Northern Mozambique.
Improvisational pianist and composer Thelonious Monk is interviewed for French state television in 1969.
2025
"Mother Suriname" features one woman's reflections on her life; poet L. Lamar Wilson runs a marathon to lift a town's veil of racial terror.
The government's plan to build a large hydroelectric power plant in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, leaves many residents in darkness and insecurity.
A futuristic fable where laborers challenge the authoritarian regime; "Tsutsue" follows two boys coping with the death of their brother.
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2022
The story of The Real Thing, the first all-Black British band to hit number one on the U.K. pop charts.
Ghofrane, a 25-year-old Black Tunisian woman, decides to go into politics.
Victims of the Six-Day War in the Democratic Republic of Congo fight with authorities in the city of Kisangani for compensation.
A look into whether European museums should return works of art to Africa.
Sudanese American poets and musicians, whose families previously left Sudan for America, gather in American cities to support the revolution in Sudan.
2019
Examining the life of South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba through archival performance footage and interviews.
Honorine Munyole, known as Mama Colonel, leads a special police force that addresses violence against children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Nine Rwandans use photographs to keep the memories of their loved ones alive during the 1994 genocide.
The 2014 campaign of Bakari Sellers, a young black Democrat running for lieutenant governor of South Carolina.
Three short programs include the animated documentary "black enuf," "Swimmin' Lesson" and "Dressed Like Kings."
2026
Focusing on the voices of Black women and birthing people as they navigate pregnancy, birth and care in America.
2024
Danielle Metz steps into a different reality when she returns home to New Orleans after her triple life prison sentence is commuted.
Mwix protests her mother's decision to remove her terminally ill 9-year-old sister from the hospital to live out her last days at home; Ben Cunningham works to transform a classroom of preschool girls into warrior princesses in "School Days."
A young amnesiac strikes up an intense friendship in Kati Kati; the short film "Summertime."
The historical significance of Princeville, N.C., the first town incorporated by freed enslaved Africans in America.