Black Lens Program Schedule – Films by African Americans at the MKE Film Festival

Explore Our Galleries

An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

Breaking News!

Today's news and culture by Black and other reporters in the Black and mainstream media.

Click Here

Ways to Support ABHM?

Click Here

September 20, 2014

John Ridley, Director of "JIMI: All Is By My Side," received an Oscar for the screenplay of "12 Years a Slave." — John Ridley, Director of “JIMI: All Is By My Side,” received an Oscar this year for the screenplay of “12 Years a Slave.”

Wesley Morris, who keynotes the festival, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his film criticism.

This year the Milwaukee Film Festival introduces its program of films by emerging and established black filmmakers, including Milwaukee’s own John Ridley, the 2014 Academy Award-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave.

The keynote address on the “State of Cinema” will be delivered by Wesley Morris, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Please come out and support this work!

Black Lens showtimes and links to trailers.

Spotlight Film – JIMI: All Is By My Side

JIMI: All Is By My Side, directed by Milwaukee native son John Ridley. — Milwaukee native John Ridley brings us an intimate portrait of rock legend Jimi Hendrix. Magnetically portrayed by Outkast’s Andre Benjamin (a pure embodiment on par with Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles), this is Jimi Hendrix as an artist on the verge of creative breakthrough.

SAT 10/4 – 7pm Oriental Theatre

25 to Life

SAT 10/4 – 7pm Times Cinema
TUES 10/7 – 11am Oriental Theatre

CRU

SUN 9/28 – 4:30pm Times Cinema
TUES 9/30 – 7:45pm Oriental Theatre

Evolution of a Criminal

TUES 9/30 – 3pm Oriental Theatre
FRI 10/3 – 9:30pm Fox-Bay Cinema

Freedom Summer

FRI 9/26 – 4:15pm Oriental Theatre
MON 9/29 – 7pm Fox-Bay Cinema

Hollywood Shuffle

FRI 10/3 – 7pm Oriental Theatre

Things Never Said

WED 10/1 – 7:30pm Oriental Theatre
THUR 10/2 – Oriental Theatre

Through A Lens Darkly: Photography has played an important role for 175 years in documenting and shaping the African-American experience. Used as both an instrument of oppression and a tool for social change while defining and shaping images of “black” or “blackness” in American popular culture. Thomas Allen Harris’ film exposes hidden histories in these photographs.

Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People

THUR 10/2 – 2pm Fox-Bay Cinema
TUES 10/7 – 2pm Times Cinema
THUR 10/9 – 7:30pm Oriental Theatre

‘Til Infinity: Celebrating 20 Years of the Souls of Mischief

SAT 9/27 – 9pm Oriental Theatre

Two films about black musicians that may also be of interest:

Finding Fela

MON 9/29 – 1:15pm Oriental Theatre
FRI 10/3 – 7:30pm Oriental Theatre
WED 10/8 – 9:30pm Fox-Bay Cinema

Take Me to the River

SUN 10/5 – 4:30pm Oriental Theatre
MON 10/6 – 7:30pm Oriental Theatre
WED 10/8 – 2:00pm Times Cinema

Keynote: The State of Cinema

SAT 9/27 – 12:00pm Colectivo Coffee on Prospect (FREE non-ticketed event, open to the public)

Check out our community events calendar for more film events.

Comments Are Welcome

Note: We moderate submissions in order to create a space for meaningful dialogue, a space where museum visitors – adults and youth –– can exchange informed, thoughtful, and relevant comments that add value to our exhibits.

Racial slurs, personal attacks, obscenity, profanity, and SHOUTING do not meet the above standard. Such comments are posted in the exhibit Hateful Speech. Commercial promotions, impersonations, and incoherent comments likewise fail to meet our goals, so will not be posted. Submissions longer than 120 words will be shortened.

See our full Comments Policy here.