The Henry Hampton Film Series is a co-presentation of Cinema St. Louis and Washington University Libraries' Film & Media Archive. The Henry Hampton Film Series debuted in November 2014 at the St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) with “Through a Lens Darkly.” Other films that have screened in this series include "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution" and "Scarred Justice: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968."
The series is named in honor of Henry Hampton (1940-98), a St. Louis native and 1961 graduate of Washington University, where his 35,000-plus-item collection is housed in the libraries’ Film and Media Archive. Hampton's works chronicled the 20th century’s great political and social movements, focusing on the lives of the poor and disenfranchised. The best known of Hampton's 60-plus major film and media projects was his epic 14-part PBS series “Eyes on the Prize.” More than 25 years after its release, it is still considered the definitive work on the civil-rights movement.