12 Years a Slave became the first film directed and
produced by a black filmmaker — Steve McQueen, and also the first to be written by an African - American — John Ridley, to win the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of the Year.
4 — Pioneers of African - American Cinema (Kino Lorber, Blu - ray, DVD) is the first comprehensive effort devoted to collecting and preserving feature films and shorts
produced between 1915 and 1946 for
black audiences, most of them made
by African - American
filmmakers.