‘Is That Black Enough for You!?!’ is an ode to black American cinema

In the age of the Black Panther films and the subsequent much welcomed and needed opening of the doors to a profusion of expressions and explorations of black lives on screen, you might think this is a moment that’s exceptional in movie history.

You’d be wrong, as film historian, film lover and now documentary director Elvis Mitchell brilliantly shows in his blazingly smart, personal and celebratory two-and-a-half hour ode to the overlooked but powerful and longer-than-many-think history of black American cinema, Is That Black Enough for You?

Using his youthful experience of going to the movies during the height of Blaxploitation as a jumping-off point, Mitchell casts his far-ranging and connection-making gaze over the whole history. He plucks from it underappreciated gems, memorable characters and groundbreaking creators who managed to buck against mainstream indifference and find ways to reflect the bitter truths and ordinary lives and loves of black Americans on screen in entertaining ways.

From the dangerously provocative anti-establishment racial politics of pioneering silent-era black director Oscar Micheaux; to the different responses to the civil rights  struggles by friends and friendly rivals Sydney Poitier and Harry Belafonte; to the righteously indignant social critiques woven into the pleasures of the brief but burning Blaxploitation era in the 1970s, Mitchell weaves a complex and delightfully heartfelt argument for a reassessment of the history of black film that deservedly elevates many to their place among the overall canon of the truly great.

He’s ably and enthusiastically assisted by a plethora of interviews with some recognisable and powerful black players in Hollywood who were inspired by the work done before them to take their chances in an often hostile creative environment and change it into the more representative shape we recognise now.

From legendary pioneering indie-film director Charles Burnett and 1970s sex symbol Billy Dee Williams, to Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, Samuel L Jackson, the indomitable and always outspoken Spike Lee and generation leading light Zendaya, Mitchell is not alone in his quest to give black film its deserved respect and acknowledgment.

Like all the best documentaries about film, Mitchell’s is more than a highlights tour through history, thanks to his own passion for his subject and the wealth of archive and talent he's unearthed and co-opted. By the time it’s all over you’ll be going back to the beginning, searching for the films mentioned and ensuring by any means necessary you greedily consume them and learn to love them as much as he does.

• ‘Is That Black Enough for You?' is streaming on Netflix.