Bud, Not Buddy

Steve James followed two Black teenagers from Chicago's housing projects, William Gates and Arthur Agee, for five years as they tried to turn basketball into a way out. They are recruited to a suburban Catholic school, injured, dropped and picked up again, and their families pay for it. The film runs three hours and doesn't hurry.

Why it’s here: The film takes apart the idea that sports is the way out by staying with the families when it doesn't work. What's punk is that the boys and their parents are the authors of the story. What's pedagogical is how clearly it shows tuition, scouting and recruiting as systems. Pairs with Most Likely to Succeed and The Shame of the Nation.

Stan works at a slaughterhouse in Watts and is too tired to sleep, too tired to be present with his wife, too stubborn to take the criminal job a friend offers. Burnett made it as a UCLA thesis film with friends and non-professional actors, shot over a year of weekends, and it plays like a series of moments with kids, music and boredom. It was added to the National Film Registry in 1990.

Why it’s here: The film shows what poverty and a dead-end job do to a man's capacity to rest. What's punk is that it was made outside Hollywood, on its own terms, by a Black filmmaker, and it sat unreleased for decades over music rights. What's pedagogical is how much it says without explaining. Pairs with KAOS Theory and Hale County This Morning, This Evening.