Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Series

MALCOLM X: MULTIDIMENSIONAL

September 11 – September 21

September 11-21, 2025

To many, the memory of Malcolm X is an image: steady eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, white shirt and dark tie underneath a sharp suit, radiating composed authority and charismatic fervor. A monumental historical and cultural figure, his hyper-photographed and -televised image was distorted, demonized, and commodified by mainstream media and Hollywood – in life, as in death. Yet Malcolm X, or rather el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, often pictured with a camera in hand, was a virtuosic conductor of his own public persona. He deftly used his image to advance a political and spiritual project for Black liberation and self-determination that expanded into a Pan-Africanist and internationalist vision for freedom from imperialism, colonialism, and global oppression.

MALCOLM X: MULTIDIMENSIONAL brings together a cinematic and audiovisual cultural memory to frame his multifaceted legacy, intertwining Islam, education, Black Nationalism, militant organizing, incarceration, and Third Worldist solidarity. Through mythmaking, recordkeeping, documentaries, and experimental films; network programs of speeches and interviews with Malcolm X as well as his contemporaries and inheritors; documentation by Black television producers; and the radical imaginaries of artists, the series constructs a prismatic perspective on the many people Malcolm X was, and places the individual in a collective picture.

Guest-programmed by Yasmina Price, who also wrote the introduction and program descriptions.

Special thanks to all the filmmakers; and to Ruta Abolins (University of Georgia); Ina Archer & Blake McDowell (National Museum of African American History & Culture); Brian Belovarac (Janus Films); Smokey Fontaine; Mickey Gral (Chicago Film Archives); Michael Holland (Los Angeles City Archives); Bob Hunter (Icarus Films); Anjelica James (WNET); Edward McCarry (Cinema Guild); Karl McCool & Jooyoung Park (EAI); Elen Orson; Jake Perlin (The Film Desk); Paul Richards (Estuary Press); Elena Rossi-Snook (NYPL); Roselly Torres & Shu Wang (Third World Newsreel); and Mike Wendt.

Upcoming Screenings

< Back to Series