Ahmir K. Thompson, known professionally as Questlove, is an American drummer, record producer, disc jockey, filmmaker, music journalist, and actor. He is the drummer and joint frontman for the hip-hop band the Roots. The Roots have been the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since 2014, after having fulfilled the same role on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Questlove is also one of the producers of the 2015 cast album of the Broadway musical Hamilton. He has also co-founded of the websites Okayplayer and OkayAfrica. He joined Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University as an adjunct professor in 2016, and hosts the podcast Questlove Supreme.
Cudjoe Kazoola Lewis, born Oluale Kossola, and also known as Cudjo Lewis, was the third-to-last adult survivor of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States. Together with 115 other African captives, he was brought to the United States on board the ship Clotilda in 1860. The captives were landed in backwaters of the Mobile River near Mobile, Alabama, and hidden from authorities. The ship was scuttled to evade discovery, and remained undiscovered until May 2019.
The Order of Myths is a 2008 documentary film directed by Margaret Brown. It focuses on the Mardi Gras celebrations in Mobile, Alabama, the oldest in the United States. It reveals the separate mystic societies established and maintained by Black and White groups, and acknowledges the complex racial history of a city with a slaveholding past.
The schooner Clotilda was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 ft (7.0 m).
Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Plateau, is an historic community located three miles (5 km) north of downtown Mobile, Alabama. It was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were bought and transported against their will in the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States. The Atlantic slave trade had been banned since 1808, but 110 slaves held by the Kingdom of Dahomey were smuggled into Mobile on the Clotilda, which was burned and scuttled to try to conceal its illicit cargo. More than 30 of these people, believed to be ethnic Yoruba, Ewe, and Fon, founded and created their own community in what became Africatown. They retained their West African customs and language into the 1950s, while their children and some elders also learned English. Cudjo Kazoola Lewis, a founder of Africatown, lived until 1935 and was long thought to be the last survivor of the slaves from the Clotilda living in Africatown.
Margaret Brown is an American film director who has directed four feature length documentaries. Her film Descendant, about the descendants of survivors of the last ship to carry enslaved Africans into the United States, was shortlisted for the 2023 Academy Awards.
Ryan White is a documentary producer and director best known for his Netflix documentary film Pamela, a Love Story, Amazon Prime's Good Night Oppy, which won five Critics Choice Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, and his Emmy-nominated Netflix series The Keepers. White's previous films include the HBO movie The Case Against 8, which won Sundance's Directing Award and was nominated for two Emmys, the documentary film Ask Dr. Ruth, and Coded, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award.
Higher Ground Productions, also known simply as Higher Ground, is an American production company which was founded in 2018 by former United States President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Timothy Meaher was an American slave trader, son of an Irish immigrant father and an Anglo-Irish American mother. He was one of eight children and he was raised in rural Whitefield, Maine. In 1835, Timothy and his brother James left Maine for Mobile Alabama. In that same year, Timothy had worked on a steamboat named the Wanderer. Meaher worked on nine different ships before he owned his own steamboat and a large sawmill in the 1840’s. In 1855, Timothy married Mary C. Waters. Mary C. Waters was the niece of Edward Kavanagh, who was a prominent figure in local government at the time. Meaher and three of his brothers had plantations, sawmills, timberlands and steamboats. Meaher was a wealthy human trafficker, businessman and landowner. He purchased the slave-ship Clotilda and was responsible for the last known slave voyage to the United States after the abolishment of slavery.
Time is a 2020 American documentary film produced and directed by Garrett Bradley. It follows Sibil Fox Richardson and her fight for the release of her husband, Rob, who was serving a 60-year prison sentence for engaging in an armed bank robbery.
The Critics' Choice Documentary Awards are accolades that are presented by the Critics Choice Association to honour the finest achievements in documentary filmmaking and non-fiction television. They were established in 2016, and the first ceremony was held on November 3, 2016.
The Critics' Choice Documentary Award for Best Documentary Feature is one of the awards presented annually by Critics Choice Association since the awards debuted in 2016.
Navalny is a 2022 American documentary film directed by Daniel Roher. The film revolves around Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and events related to his poisoning. It was produced by HBO Max and CNN Films. The film premiered on January 25, 2022 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical and audience acclaim and won the Audience Award in the US Documentary competition and the Festival Favorite Award. It also won the Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, won the award for Best Political Documentary at the 7th Critics' Choice Documentary Awards and picked up best documentary at the 76th BAFTA awards ceremony.
The Territory is a 2022 internationally co-produced documentary film directed by Alex Pritz. It follows a young Indigenous leader of the Uru-eu-wau-wau people fighting back against farmers, colonizers and settlers who encroach on a protected area of the Amazon Rainforest. Filmed on location in Brazil from 2018 to 2020, the film utilizes almost exclusively on-the-ground, primary source material, including footage produced directly by the Uru-eu-wau-wau. Darren Aronofsky serves as a producer under his Protozoa Pictures banner.
Fire of Love is a 2022 independent documentary film about the lives and careers of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Directed, written, and produced by Sara Dosa, the film had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2022, where it won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award. It was released on July 6, 2022, by National Geographic Documentary Films and Neon. It received acclaim from critics, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
Aftershock is a 2022 American documentary film directed and produced by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee. It follows Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, whose partners died due to childbirth complications, which were preventable, as they fight for justice.
All That Breathes is a 2022 documentary film directed by Shaunak Sen. It is produced by Shaunak Sen, Aman Mann and Teddy Leifer under the banner of Rise Films. The film follows siblings Mohammad Saud and Nadeem Shehzad, who rescue and treat injured birds in India.
7th Critics' Choice Documentary Awards, presented by the Critics Choice Association, was held on November 13, 2022, at the Edison Ballroom in New York City, to honor finest achievements in documentary filmmaking and non-fiction television. The ceremony was hosted by Wyatt Cenac and was broadcast on Facebook Live and Instagram Live.
Riotsville, U.S.A. is a 2022 American documentary film by Sierra Pettengill and narrated by Charlene Modeste.
Africatown Heritage House is a community building in Mobile, Alabama that houses "Clotilda: The Exhibition" about the survivors and descendants of slaves transported on the Clotilda, the United States' last known slave ship, many of whom established Africatown.
