Showtime, Starz Offer Anti-Racism Docs For Viewing On Multiple Platforms

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Peabody Award-nominated and Television Academy Honors documentary 16 Shots and director Sacha Jenkins’s Burn Motherf*cker, Burn! are being offered for free viewing on multiple platforms by Showtime.

16 Shots examines the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke and the cover-up that ensued. Burn Motherf*cker, Burn! explores the complicated relationship between the Los Angeles Police Department and the city’s Black and minority communities.

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Showtime said it was making the documentaries available in an effort to provide resources and raise awareness around the ongoing struggle against systemic racism in America.

Both are now streaming on YouTube and SHO.com, and are available to Showtime subscribers on demand. The two films will also be available across multiple television and streaming providers’ devices, websites, applications and authenticated online services and their free On Demand channels.

16 Shots is a joint production from Midnight Productions, Topic Studios, Impact Partners and Chicago Media Project. Jacqueline Soohen, Michael Bloom, Lisa Leingang, Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Ken Nolan and Brian Kenney serve as executive producers.

Burn Motherf*cker, Burn! is produced and directed by Sacha Jenkins, and executive produced by Misha Louy on behalf of Mass Appeal.

Starz has also made available a collection of programming that amplifies Black voices across Starz platforms, including the App and On-Demand without a subscription. The collection features feature films, documentary films and series that examine issues of racial inequality and injustice in America today and throughout the last century.

Beginning today, the following titles will be available on Starz platforms, App & linear:

• “America to Me” – An Official Selection of the Sundance Film Festival, the San Francisco Chronicle recently called “America to Me” “one of the most urgent pieces of U.S. nonfiction filmmaking to come out in the past few years — a dispatch from the cultural front line, and an American epic on the scale of Robert Altman’s “Nashville” or Frederick Wiseman’s “In Jackson Heights.”

Academy Award nominated filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life
Itself) examines racial, economic and class issues in contemporary
American education in the multipart unscripted documentary series
“America to Me.”

• “A Huey P. Newton Story” – A Starz Original Production, Huey P. Newton, charismatic co-founder of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, tells the riveting story of his life and times in this one-man show. Directed by Spike Lee.

• “Emanuel” – After a 21-year-old white supremacist opened fire in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, nine African Americans lay dead, leaving their families and the nation to grapple with this senseless act of terror. Featuring intimate interviews with survivors and family members, EMANUEL, from executive producers Stephen Curry and Viola Davis, is a poignant story of justice and faith, love and hate, examining the healing power of forgiveness.

• “For Ahkeem” – “For Ahkeem” follows Daje Shelton, a 17-year-old Black girl from North St. Louis, as she strives to graduate from the nation’s only court-supervised public high school. Daje fights for her future as close friends are killed, her sixteen-year-old boyfriend is pulled into the prison system, and nearby Ferguson erupts after the police shooting of Michael Brown. Through Daje’s intimate first-person account, “For Ahkeem” explores the complex web between juvenile justice, education, and race in America today.

• “Out of Omaha” – An intimate portrait of twin brothers Darcell and Darrell Trotter, two young black men coming of age in the racially and economically-divided Midwestern town of Omaha, Nebraska. From executive producer J. Cole.

• “Scandalize My Name” – This documentary, narrated by Morgan Freeman, examines several prominent African-American performers in the American film and television industries during the 1950s Communist witch-hunting McCarthy era.

• “Stranger Fruit” – What really happened on August 9^th, 2014 in Ferguson Missouri. That afternoon, officer Darren Wilson killed 18-year-old Michael Brown. “Stranger Fruit” is the unraveling of what took place, told through the eyes of Mike Brown’s family.

• “The Rape of Recy Taylor” – A documentary about Recy Taylor, who was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Unbroken, Mrs. Taylor spoke up and fought for justice with help from Rosa Parks and countless women.

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