California Newsreel

04/21/2026

U.S. life expectancy has now fallen behind…Albania. Can you believe it? Public health researcher Steven Woolf explains why. This is Part I of two posts.

In a discussion with INET’s Lynn Parramore, researcher Steven H. Woolf explains how the peculiar features of life, policy, and economics in America are killing us sooner, and what we can do to change it. *This is Part 1 of a two-part interview; Part 2 is here.

10/06/2025

Living in an inequal society changes the structures of children’s developing brains, a new study says. The brain changes observed “suggest that inequality creates a toxic social environment that literally shapes how young minds develop, with consequences for mental health and impacts that can last a lifetime,” said one of the study’s authors.

Researchers say findings show inequality creates toxic environment and reducing it is ‘a public health imperative’

09/26/2025

California Newsreel mourns the passing of African Cinema scholar and Howard University professor Mbye Cham. He was always a vital resource to California Newsreel’s Library of African Cinema.
In memory: https://africanstudies.org/in-memory/mbye-cham-1947-2025/

Read Mbye Cham on African Cinema at: https://newsreel.org/articles/context.htm

09/25/2025

The New York Film Festival will present the 4K restoration of MORTU NEGA, the classic film on the independence struggle and post independence challenges of Guinea-Bissau by Flora Gomes. The screening dates are 9/27, 9/29 and 10/2 at Lincoln Center and 10/7 at the BAM in Brooklyn. California Newsreel distributes MORTU NEGA and Gomes’s later work THE BLUE EYES OF YONTA.

A structurally fascinating and texturally engrossing meditation on revolution, Flora Gomes’s pioneering debut feature follows a wounded soldier’s devoted wife as she heads to battle to be with her husband during the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence.

09/10/2025

Wow! New Mexico to make history as the first state to offer free childcare to every family, regardless of income. This is a game changer, for New Mexico children, parents and its economy. Which state will be next?

Move is expansion of existing program that has helped lift tens of thousands of people out of poverty

08/04/2025

NIH cancels an important black maternal health study, infuriating many. The study aimed to understand how social environments might accelerate physiological aging, leading to more adverse birth outcomes.

Jaime Slaughter-Acey said it was ‘heartbreaking’ to discover her study on Black maternal health was cancelled after the Trump administration’s NIH cuts

07/14/2025

Our children’s physical health and mental well-being, along with their academic and social skills rank at the bottom of wealthy nations. And in absolute terms, our children’s health continues to get worse, according to a new study.

U.S. children are more likely to die than those in other high-income countries, a new analysis confirms

03/26/2025

In the current issue of the journal FILMS FOR THE FEMINIST CLASSOOM, Professor Curtis Austin of Arizona State University reviewed the California Newsreel releases AGENTS OF CHANGE and BAdddDDD SONIA SANCHEZ. He wrote, “During a moment when equity, inclusion, and the teaching of Black history is under constant attack, the two films can serve as an introduction to an important historical period when young people utilized progressive approaches to tackle seemingly intractable social problems.”

Agents of Change. Directed by Frank Dawson and Abby Ginzberg. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 2016. 66 minutes. BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez. Directed by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 2015. 91 minutes. Reviewed by Curtis Austin These fil...

11/30/2024

A 4K restoration of Kathe Sandler's A QUESTION OF COLOR is coming to the Academy Museum's Ted Mann Theater December 14, 2024 at 2:30 PM on a double feature with LaTanya Richardson Jackson's HAIRSTORY.

Kathe Sandler’s 1993 documentary on colorism and LaTanya Richardson Jackson's heart-warming short film Hairstory.

08/16/2024

BaddDDD Sanchez film featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

From the MOVE bombing, to Larry Krasner, Sonia Sanchez, and Malcolm Kenyatta, Philly's documentaries tell the stories of its communities.