As worldwide action against police violence (as well as a normalization of state-sponsored racism and armed-citizen violence) continues in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, it can feel strange and perhaps inappropriate to be talking about film, or even considering it.

But although the act of engaging with film is far from activism, there is still value to be found. These events are cyclical, and painful, and exhausting; you shouldn’t insist that your Black friends help you understand, you should be doing the work yourself. One easy way to start: with the many creative and galvanizing works by Black filmmakers. The likes of Spike Lee, Ava DuVernay, Cheryl Dunye and so many others have already done the job, all you have to do is watch.*

And, as clichéd as it feels to invoke, the simplest reasoning comes from Roger Ebert, who said: “Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else’s life for a while. I can walk in somebody else’s shoes.”

A lot of Letterboxd members feel the same way. Just as cinephiles flocked to Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread, viewings of the likes of Ava DuVernary’s documentary 13th, Spike Lee’s magnum opus Do the Right Thing and Raoul Peck’s elegiac James Baldwin essay film I Am Not Your Negro—along with more films focused on Black experience, history and protest—have spiked in viewing and review numbers in the past fortnight.

Malcolm X, Selma, Daughters of the Dust, The Hate U Give, If Beale Street Could Talk, Just Mercy, Fruitvale Station, and more are all enjoying an undeniable surge of viewership—in some cases, an increase of a thousand percent over their historical viewership numbers. And a matching rise in the number of reviews gives us insight into the feelings, or sense of catharsis, people are seeking from these films. Here, we take a survey of recent reactions to the top five—followed by suggestions for digging deeper.

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Directed by Spike Lee

It could be said that the recognition of this repetition is part of why these particular films have proven so popular in recent weeks. Perhaps the most significant part of the engagement with older work like Spike Lee’s (arguably best) film Do The Right Thing, is that the imagery hasn’t aged. As Ashley Clark says in a recent piece for Time on films about Black history and protest, “…it’s amazing to see those patterns repeat now, specifically in the discourse of people focusing more on the destruction of property than on lives that are lost”. Do The Right Thing’s palpable anger and unending relevance make it one of the best fictional films to watch right now, if not for understanding and empathy (“I have a lot of empathizing to do,” Letterboxd member Ted agrees), then for some kind of catharsis.

Malcolm X (1992)

Directed by Spike Lee

It’s not just Do The Right Thing either—even just going off the numbers, Spike Lee is a go-to name when it comes to engaging with Black people’s history in America and in American film. He’s been engaging with these subjects of protest and anguish for the longest time, and there are few such prolific directors in the way he broaches the subject, crossing the line back and forth between fiction and non-fiction, readily blending the two together in many cases.

That status feels evident in the corresponding surges of popularity for Malcolm X, one of his most acclaimed works, and BlacKkKlansman, one of his most recent. His latest work, the excellent, galvanizing war drama Da 5 Bloods (streaming on Netflix now), acts as a reminder that institutional racism is not just a symptom of the current establishment, but something deeply embedded in American ideology. It’s a multimedia examination of the overlap of racism and imperialism, its arguments backed up by clips of Angela Davis, Kwame Ture, Muhammad Ali and of course Malcolm X.

Malcolm X is a valuable watch in that it provides a loving and complex portrait of a man often vilified by white liberals as much as white conservatives, an example of the ‘wrong’ way to protest or take action. It’s a counterpoint to the reductive and often-held perspective of the man, who is often presumed to have stood in opposition to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s a humanist portrait of a man constantly changing, one brought to life by, as Jaime Rebenal writes, “one of cinema’s very finest performances” from Denzel Washington (whom, I must reinforce, was truly robbed of that Oscar). A long film, but not a minute wasted.

I could talk at length about that supposed saintliness being thrown back in the faces of Black people, as well as the gossip compounded by American institutions to discredit the man’s work—DuVernay and David Oyelowo’s interpretation of MLK saves me that time.

All beautifully lensed by the—at that point—upcoming cinematographer Bradford Young (whose subsequent credits include Arrival and Solo: A Star Wars Story), and with typically gorgeous costume design from Black Panther Oscar-winner Ruth E. Carter (a long-time associate of Spike Lee), it’s a visual treat as well.

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Directed by Raoul Peck

I Am Not Your Negro, Raoul Peck’s documentary-slash-adaptation of the unpublished James Baldwin memoir, provides a similar juxtaposition between America’s past racism and its present. Narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, words from Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript ‘Remember This House’ explore American anti-Blackness through a mixture of archival footage and anecdotes from Baldwin, as he recounts the lives of his civil rights leader friends Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers and others.

As with many other Letterboxd reviews, Daisoujou reflects on the persistence of state-sponsored racism, writing that it’s “a movie that feels like it was made yesterday, based on writings from roughly the ’80s, which also feel written yesterday, in the most depressing way”. A lot of identifying with films detailing Black protest is to recognize this cycle, the seeming neverending-ness of it all; that engagement with racism is not just something occurring in the present moment but something that carries the weight of history, at all times.

These are all strong starting points for the beginning of an empathy with Black protest, struggle, history and art on film. But it’s just scratching the surface. The five films above mostly skew towards the recent, when there’s a long and exceptional history of Black cinema.

It’s important to consider the expansiveness of Black art, that not all of it is about our tragedies, there’s more to witness than our pain, and this deserves attention after crisis as well. K. Austin Collins’ introduction for his Vanity Fair list says it best: “Black defiance on-screen is bigger than Do the Right Thing, however. Black defiance (including but not limited to outright protest), Black anger, Black art: These are vast territories.” As Collins’ excellent two-part list states, the history of our representation and the self-determination of our on-screen legacies of course goes far beyond just the work of Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay.

The protests have also, naturally, lead to conversations around representation of Black people across media, in front of and behind the camera. Such discovery is both vital and easier than ever, as the protests have inspired artists and streaming sites to make their library of work more accessible—among those, the Criterion Channel, having dropped the paywall for much of its collection focusing on Black lives.