The Video Vault – Feb22

February 2022

This Black History Month we celebrate Oscar-winning performances!

Since 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has given many awards for acting. Yet, they have only given 20 awards to Black actors in all that time. This month we celebrate those award-winning performances, while also calling for more diversity at the Oscars!

These films are only available to LA+D Film majors and minors.
If you want access, email us.

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Oscar-Winning Performances

**Judas And The Black Messiah**
*2020*
Offered a plea deal by the FBI, William O’Neal infiltrates the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to gather intelligence on Chairman Fred Hampton.
**Daniel Kaluuya**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**Green Book**
*2018*
A working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver of an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.
**Mahershala Ali**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**If Beale Street Could Talk**
*2018*
A young woman embraces her pregnancy while she and her family set out to prove her childhood friend and lover innocent of a crime he didn’t commit.
**Regina King**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**Fences**
*2016*
A working-class African-American father tries to raise his family in the 1950s, while coming to terms with the events of his life.
**Viola Davis**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**Moonlight**
*2016*
A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.
**Mahershala Ali**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**12 Years A Slave**
*2013*
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.
**Lupita Nyong’o**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**The Help**
*2011*
An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African American maids’ point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.
**Octavia Spencer**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**Precious**
*2009*
In New York City’s Harlem circa 1987, an overweight, abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction.
**Mo’Nique**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**Dreamgirls**
*2006*
A trio of black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s, facing their own personal struggles along the way.
**Jennifer Hudson**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**The Last King of Scotland**
*2006*
Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970s.
**Forest Whitaker**
*Best Actor*

**Million Dollar Baby**
*2004*
A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.
**Morgan Freeman**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**Ray**
*2004*
The story of the life and career of the legendary rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles, from his humble beginnings in the South, where he went blind at age seven, to his meteoric rise to stardom during the 1950s and 1960s.
**Jamie Foxx**
*Best Actor*

**Monster’s Ball**
*2001*
After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard re-examines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.
**Halle Berry**
*Best Actress*

**Training Day**
*2001*
A rookie cop spends his first day as a Los Angeles narcotics officer with a rogue detective who isn’t what he appears to be.
**Denzel Washington**
*Best Actor*

**Jerry Maguire**
*1996*
When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent agent with the only athlete who stays with him and his former colleague.
**Cuba Gooding, Jr.**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**Ghost**
*1990*
After a young man is murdered, his spirit stays behind to warn his lover of impending danger, with the help of a reluctant psychic.
**Whoopi Goldberg**
*Best Supporting Actress*

**Glory**
*1989*
Robert Gould Shaw leads the U.S. Civil War’s first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices from both his own Union Army, and the Confederates.
**Denzel Washington**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**An Officer And A Gentleman**
*1982*
A young man must complete his work at a Navy Officer Candidate School to become an aviator, with the help of a tough Gunnery Sergeant and his new girlfriend.
**Louis Gossett, Jr.**
*Best Supporting Actor*

**Lilies Of The Field**
*1963*
A traveling handyman becomes the answer to the prayers of nuns who wish to build a chapel in the desert.
**Sidney Poitier**
*Best Actor*

**Gone With The Wind**
*1939*
The manipulative daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a turbulent romance with a roguish profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
**Hattie McDaniel**
*Best Supporting Actress*

These movies are presented in their unedited form as inspiration for Film students and faculty. Some content may be for mature audiences, and viewers should use their own discretion when selecting a film. All ideas presented in these films are the views of their respective creators, and the sharing of these films does not represent an endorsement of the content, filmmaker biography or history of these films by Lesley University faculty or staff.