Some Suggestions for the Criterion Collection #BlackCriterion

After the article in the New York Times about the shortcomings in the Criterion Collection, many people have taken it upon themselves to draw up lists of what should be included, great work that needs more recognition, films and filmmakers who deserve to be considered part of the canon. I’m a film nerd and so many of the lists have given me films that I haven’t seen, and I wanted to add my own suggestions. I have also most likely forgotten as many filmmakers as I listed. I will just say that all of these filmmakers deserve to be in the Criterion collection, to be discussed and considered and studied more than they are.

Madeline Anderson

Her documentaries like Integration Report One and I Am Somebody are a very big deal.

Maya Angelou

The sole film she directed was Down in the Delta, a small gem featuring Alfre Woodard, Mary Alice, Al Freeman, Jr., Loretta Divine, Wesley Snipes in a film whose strength lies in a naturalistic performers (especially Woodard and Freeman) who masterfully illuminate these characters lives.

Charles Burnett

Burnett is simply one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers. Criterion released To Sleep with Anger, arguably his best film. There’s a great two disk set of Killer of Sheep, which includes his second film My Brother’s Wedding. It would be nice to see some of his later work receive such treatment. Like Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation? Maybe a set of his documentaries? Burnett also directed a few television films, and I haven’t seen them all, but Nightjohn is excellent, and Selma, Lord, Selma and The Wedding are both good.

Rafael Casal and David Diggs

Blindspotting is a great film first film by two longtime friends and first time writer-directors and what they pull off is something truly personal, something that speaks to the Bay Area and to this moment.

Chinonye Chukwu

Clemency was one of the most deeply moving and deeply political films that came out last year, thanks to a flawless cast and a central performance by the great Alfre Woodard.

Kathleen Collins

Losing Ground was so under appreciated when it came out in 1982 but watch it today and it is a great work. Plus her prose work has been reissued in recent years to great acclaim and attention.

Ryan Coogler

I would love a nice edition of his debut feature Fruitvale Station along with his short films.

Julie Dash

Daughters of the Dust is a masterpiece. The Rosa Parks Story (starring Angela Bassett) is good. She also made a number of short films, which I’ll be honest, I’ve never had the chance to see, but I know I’m not alone in wanting to see them.

Ossie Davis

There’s his adaptation of Chester Himes’ novel Cotton Comes to Harlem. Black Girl is a drama featuring some great actors (Claudia McNeil, Peggy Pettit, Leslie Uggams, Ruby Dee, Brock Peters). There’s also the action drama Countdown at Kusini about African revolutionaries and the drama Crown Dick.

One of his films that seems made for Criterion is Kongi’s Harvest, which was written by and stars the Nobel Prize winning writer and playwright Wole Soyinka. I could be wrong but I believe that’s the only time that Soyinka has written a script or acted in a film, which given that he is a Nobel Prize winner feels…notable?

Mati Diop

I really want a Criterion release of her film Atlantics.

Bill Duke

You might know him mostly as an actor, but he’s the director of some very good films including The Killing Floor, about labor activism in the early 20th century, A Rage in Harlem, based on the novel by the great American novelist Chester Himes, Deep Cover, a great noir film starring Laurence Fishburne, and Hoodlum, which took some liberties with the historical record but is still a good gangster film about 20s/30s Harlem. He also directed an A Raisin in the Sun with Danny Glover and Esther Rolle for television.

Cheryl Dunye

The Watermelon Woman. Stranger Inside. The Owls. All her short films.

Anne-Laure Folly

This filmmaker from Togo has directed a great collection of documentaries over the years including Femmes aux yeux ouverts and Les Oubliées.

Carl Franklin

Devil in a Blue Dress is a masterpiece, with two of the best performances by Denzel Washington and Don Cheadle ever. I also quite like One False Move.

Lisa Gay Hamilton

Her film Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, about the late actor and activist, is a great, award-winning documentary.

Tanya Hamilton

Night Catches Us is that rare film that manages to be a great interpersonal drama while also showing us characters caught up in larger historical events. A masterpiece in miniature.

Thomas Allen Harris

The director and producer made the films Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela and Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, both of which should be on a list of great 21st Century documentaries.

Barry Jenkins

Obviously his Best Picture Oscar winner Moonlight is an obvious choice, as is his adaptation of If Beale Street Could Talk. His first film, Medicine for Melancholy, is definitely deserving and stands among some of the other debuts of notable American voices Criterion has released.

Clark Johnson

After getting his start in TV, Johnson directed the great tv film Boycott starring Jeffrey Wright as Dr. King. He also directed last year’s, Juanita, a lovely character based indie film starring the great Alfre Woodard.

Spike Lee

Where is the deluxe remastered edition of Malcolm X? There are lots of Spike films to pick from, but if I had to go with one, that’s the one. Though of course She’s Gotta Have It and Clockers and a few others would make very fine additions to the collection. Maybe his documentary 4 Little Girls? What about a multi-disk set of his documentaries When the Levees Broke and his followup If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise?

Kasi Lemmons

Her debut Eve’s Bayou was brilliant, and since then she’s made a number of others including last year’s Harriet.

Tina Mabry

Mississippi Damned is brilliant and amazing.

Sarah Maldoror

When she died earlier this year of complications from Covid, Maldoror was hailed as a pioneer of pan-African cinema and almost everyone cited her 1972 film Sambizanga about the Angolan war for independence as a masterpiece of global cinema.

Djibril Diop Mambéty

The late filmmaker only made two feature films in his lifetime, along with a number of short films, but Touki Bouki and Hyenes are both excellent. And those plus all his shorts would be a great addition to our understanding of global cinema

Steve McQueen

Hunger. Shame. 12 Years a Slave. Widows. I’d be good with a Criterion edition of any of them. I would also love a nice collection of his short films.

Gordon Parks

He’s most famous for directing Shaft (well, and for his photography) but he also directed The Learning Tree, Leadbelly (about the great blues musician), and Solomon Northrup’s Odyssey, which adapted 12 Years a Slave and starred Avery Brooks.

Raoul Peck

His film Lumumba was incredible. I Am Not Your Negro was a brilliant film about James Baldwin. There’s The Man by the Shore, Sometimes in April, Moloch Tropical, Murder in Pacot. Plus all his shorts and early work.

Sidney Poitier

The Oscar winning actor directed a few films over the years including Buck and the Preacher, a western starring Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, and the romance film Warm December starring him and Esther Anderson. He also directed the popular “trilogy” of films featuring Poitier and Bill Cosby (Uptown Saturday Night, Let’s Do It Again, and A Piece of the Action) but the presence of Cosby kind of ruins them.

Dawn Porter

The great filmmaker behind Gideon’s Army, Spies of Mississippi, and John Lewis: Good Trouble has made some of the best and important American documentaries of recent decades.

Dee Rees

Pariah was a great first film. Bessie was a fabulous TV movie anchored by a tour de force performance by Queen Latifah (possibly her very best). Mudbound was a masterpiece.

Tim Reid

Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored, a portrait of life in the rural South over nearly two decades, stands out for its portrait of a community in a time of change. Not a film about plot so much as a collection of characters and scenes and moments that cumulatively becomes this deeply affecting portrait of life and humanity.

Marlon Riggs

I would love a nice box set of his work like Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment, Black Is…Black Ain’t.

Boots Riley

Sorry to Bother You is one of the great debut films of the 21st Century.

Michael Schultz

Truly one of the great underrated filmmakers in recent American history. He directed Lorraine Hansberry’s To Be Young, Gifted and Black first on Broadway and then for television which starred the great Ruby Dee. Schultz went onto make a series of films that combined comedy and drama with social content in different ways like Cooley High and the ensemble film Car Wash.

Osmane Sembene

Criterion released Black Girl, the debut feature from the late filmmaker, which I hope will be the first of many, as I think both the quality of his work and the influence that he had certainly warrant it. I will admit that I would call Faat Kine, my favorite of his, but it was the first film of his I ever saw, when it debuted in New York in 2001, I believe. Camp de Thiaroye is not just an important historical work, but received the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and Guelwaar is a stunning masterpiece.

Melvin Van Peebles

The Story of as Three Day Pass, Watermelon Man, Sweet Sweetback’s Baasassss Song!, and Don’t Play Us Cheap would make for an interesting box set.

Also, there’s a film called Unstoppable: A Conversation with Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon Parks, and Ossie Davis. I’ve never seen it, but if you’re looking for extras, well, who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall of that conversation?

Denzel Washington

His adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences.

George C. Wolfe

One of the great theatrical directors, his film work hasn’t been on the same level, but Lackawanna Blues, an adaptation of the play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson is a great character ensemble that stars S. Epatha Merkerson.

Phillip Youmans

Burning Cane was a stunning debut film, and it’s easy to hate him for being so young and so talented, but to watch the world he crafted unroll, is to sit in awe.