Best of Black Cinema timeline
Oscar Micheux - black film maker with 42 films from 1919 to 1948. His films are all very low budget and difficult to sit through in the 21st century, but historically essential.
1929 Hallelujah - all black musical drama
1936 The Green Pastures - religion, Heaven and the bible described by rural black Americans.
1943 Stormy Weather - Lena Horne and Bill Bojangles Robinson musical
1950 No Way Out - Sidney Poitier as a doctor
1951 The Well - a six year old black girl falls into a well, fueling racial tensions in a small town
1953 Bright Road - Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge drama filmed the year before their more famous opera Carmen Jones.with dubbed singing
1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers - photographed by Ellsworth Fredericks, Hollywood’s first black cinematographer, Oscar nominated for Sayonara (1957). He was camera operator on classics including The Treasure of the SIerra Madre.
1964 The Bedford Incident - Sidney Poitier’s first film where his skin color is never mentioned and is not relevant
1971 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasss Song - written and directed by and starring Melvin van Peebles.
1972 Lady Sings the Blues - Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams biopic of singer Billie Holiday was the first crowd pleasing big Hollywood blockbuster with black leads.
1978 Killer of Sheep - written and directed by Charles Burnett
1978 The Wiz - Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne, and Richard Pryor
1984 Beverly Hills Cop - Eddie Murphy’s action comedy started the first blockbuster franchise with a black lead
1985 The Color Purple - Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover
1987 Hollywood Shuffle - written and directed by, and starring Robert Townsend
1989 Glory - Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman
1991 Boyz n the Hood - written and directed by John Singleton
1991 Daughters of the Dust - written and directed by Julie Dash
1992 Juice - written and directed by Ernest R Dickerson
1993 Suture - Dennis Haysbert
1995 Devil in a Blue Dress - written and directed by Carl Franklin
1997 Gridlock’d - written and directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall
1997 Eve’s Bayou - written and directed by Kasi Lemmons
2000 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - Forest Whitaker
2002 Antwone Fisher - directed by and starring Denzel Washington
2004 Ray - Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles
2004 Something the Lord Made - Mos Def and Gabrielle Union
2006 Dreamgirls - Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and Beyonce
2007 The Great Debaters - directed by Denzel Washington
2009 Black Dynamite - written by and starring Michael Jai White
2012 Flight - Denzel Washington
2013 42 - Chadwick Boseman as baseball’s Jackie Robinson
2013 Fruitvale Station - written and directed by Ryan Coogler
2015 Creed - written and directed by Ryan Coogler
2016 Hidden Figures - black female mathematicians at NASA
2018 Blindspotting - co-written by and starring Daveed Diggs
2018 Monsters and Men - written and directed by Reynaldo Marcus Green
2018 Spider Man Into the Spiderverse
2019 Dolemite is My Name - Eddie Murphy
2019 Just Mercy - written by Bryan Stevenson, with Michael B Jordan
Honorable mentions include the 12 films of Paul Robeson (1925-1942), Cabin in the Sky (1943), Intruder in the Dust (1949), A Raisin in the Sun (1961), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Sounder (1972), The Brother from Another Planet (1984), What’s Love Got To Do With It (1993), Higher Learning (1994), Set it Off (1995), Rosewood (1997), Training Day (2001), Barber Shop (2002), Black or White (2014), Top Five (2014), Dear White People (2014), Fences (2016), Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018), Queen and Slim (2019), and The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019).
Additions: A Natural Born Gambler (1916, Bert Williams), The Biscuit Eater (1940), Native Son (1951), Take a Giant Step (1959), Nothing But a Man (1964), The Learning Tree (1969), Putney Swope (1969), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973), Yeelen (1987), Just Another Girl on the IRT (1992), Zebrahead (1992), Trespass (1992), Dead Presidents (1995), Down in the Delta (1998), Life (1999), Baby Boy (2001), The Secret Life of Bees (2008), The Confirmation (2016), Race (2016), 42 (2017), Marshall (2017), Mudbound (2017), The Incredible Jessica James (2017), Roman J Israel esq (2017), Queen & Slim (2019), The Woman King (2022)
