“The Extraordinary Lives of Josephine Baker “ tells the story of one of the most magnetic performers of the twentieth century, a Missouri-born entertainer who fled poverty and reinvented herself in 1920s Paris, becoming the first Black woman to achieve global superstardom. Her debut in La Revue Nègre in 1925, followed by her legendary “danse sauvage” at the Folies Bergère in a skirt made of artificial bananas, made her an overnight sensation and the embodiment of the Jazz Age in Europe. She commanded the stage with a blend of comedic genius, sensuality, and athletic precision that captivated audiences from Paris to Buenos Aires, inspiring artists from Picasso to Hemingway, who famously called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” Beyond the spectacle, Baker insisted on her own dignity at a time when American venues forced her to enter through service doors; she refused to perform for segregated audiences, and stood beside Martin Luther King at the 1963 March on Washington. Believing that racism was learned, she adopted twelve children of different ethnicities and faiths, forming what she called her “Rainbow Tribe,”, seeking to show how all people could love and peacefully co-exist without hate.

But what Baker did during World War II led to one of the most remarkable, and little-known second acts in modern history. When France fell to the Nazis, Baker was recruited by French military intelligence, using her celebrity as a near-perfect cover. At a time when borders were closed, she toured neutral countries like Portugal, Spain, and Morocco ostensibly to perform, at great risk smuggling intelligence about German troop movements and Axis activity written in invisible ink on her sheet music and pinned inside her underwear, knowing that no customs officer would dare search a star of her stature. She actively gathered valuable intelligence, hosting Axis diplomats and officers and later entertained Allied troops across North Africa and the Middle East even while gravely ill. France honored her with the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette of the Resistance, and induction into the Légion d’Honneur. In 2021, because of her work as a spy and as a heroine of the resistance, she became the first Black woman interred in the Panthéon in Paris, a recognition that her importance was never merely as an entertainer but as a singular figure who used her fame as both a weapon against fascism and a standing rebuke to racism on two continents.

This 90-minute film blends vibrant archive of performances and interviews, selections from her own memoirs, and contemporary interviews with celebrities and scholars, in a fitting tribute to a truly extraordinary woman.

Director Yoruba Richen is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose recent works includes the Peabody Award winning “The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks”. Other works include the Emmy-nominated “American Reckoning” (PBS Frontline), “How it Feels to be Free” (American Masters). She is the founder of Promise Land Film, which focuses of producing nuanced, compelling documentary films that illuminate issues of race, space and power.

Support our films with a 100% US tax deduction credit

We partner with the Center for Independent Documentary (CID), a 501 (c) 3 organization for fiscal sponsorship and fundraising.

Since its inception in 1981, CID has worked with hundreds of independent film and video producers to support the production of stories not often told in mainstream media.

As a registered charity, CID can accept donations on our behalf to financially support our films. In exchange, the donor will receive a a dollar-for-dollar receipt for US income tax purposes. Learn more about CID.

“Queen of Comedy; The Phyllis Diller Story”, a 90-minute film, brings to the screen the woman who was the trailblazing force in American comedy. Her career broke open doors that had long been closed to women in stand-up. Born in 1917 in Lima, Ohio, Diller didn’t begin performing professionally until she was 37, launching her career at San Francisco’s Purple Onion club in 1955 and quickly becoming one of the first women to achieve major success as a solo stand-up comedian on the national stage. With her wild fright-wig hair, outrageous costumes, cigarette holder, and unmistakable cackling laugh, Diller crafted a persona that was self-deprecating, fearless, and utterly original. Her rapid-fire one-liners often centered on her fictional husband “Fang,” her supposed cooking disasters, and her own appearance—jokes that, in her hands, became a sly form of subversion, allowing her to dominate male-dominated stages and television showcases like The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, and her own specials throughout the 1960s and 70s.

Her importance to American comedy extends far beyond her own act. Diller essentially invented the template for the modern female stand-up, proving that women could command a microphone, deliver jokes at a relentless pace, and headline clubs and concert halls on their own terms. Comedians from Joan Rivers to Ellen DeGeneres, Wanda Sykes, Joy Behar, and Kathy Griffin have credited her as a foundational influence. She was famously meticulous about her craft, maintaining a massive joke file of over 50,000 index cards now housed at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. By turning convention on its head—making herself the punchline to claim the power of the storyteller—Diller carved out a space where women’s voices in comedy could be loud, weird, unglamorous, and commercially successful all at once. She left behind not only decades of laughter but an entire lineage of female comics who walked through the door she kicked open.

Using her inimitable archive performances, with contributions from contemporary comedians this will be a lively, wicked, and very funny film placing Phyllis Diller firmly where she belongs, on her throne, as The Queen of Comedy.

Like much of America, Director Liz Mermin grew up watching Phyllis Diller cackle her way across Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night stage. An internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker, among her most recent films are two episodes of the well-received series “David Frost VS” (SKY/MSNBC), two episodes of the CNN Originals Series “First Ladies”, (on Nancy Reagan and Michelle Obama), and “Doomscroll: Andrew Tate and the Dark Side of the Internet”.

Support our films with a 100% US tax deduction credit

We partner with the Center for Independent Documentary (CID), a 501 (c) 3 organization for fiscal sponsorship and fundraising.

Since its inception in 1981, CID has worked with hundreds of independent film and video producers to support the production of stories not often told in mainstream media.

As a registered charity, CID can accept donations on our behalf to financially support our films. In exchange, the donor will receive a a dollar-for-dollar receipt for US income tax purposes. Learn more about CID

Hazel Scott was a musical prodigy, equally at home playing Bach as she was swinging jazz with Art Tatum and Fats Waller. She was a celebrated performer when, still in her teens, she became the darling of Café Society, and conquered New York and Hollywood by the time she was 21.

Years before the Civil Rights movement, Hazel resisted social and political oppression, refused to play in front of segregated audiences, led a strike in Hollywood when a director tried to put Black actresses in dirty clothes. She was the first Black American to have her own TV show only to come under attack when the Red Scare took hold, silenced her and led her into exile.

Hazel Scott is the embodiment of the paradox of the unsung hero, those winners of moral victories who sacrificed everything for their beliefs, trailblazers who never got to see the doors they kicked down swing open for those who followed. This is her story.