In the past few months there has been some discussion about whether 2013 marked a “renaissance” in that hard-to-pin-down genre known as “black film”. It’s been established, of course, that while we did get movies like The Butler, Baggage Claim, Best Man Holiday and 12 Years a Slave, to lump all those films under ghettoizing terms, like, for instance, “race-themed,” was to ignore the diversity in the kinds of stories being told, and ultimately downplay the fact that we actually still have a very long way to go. There are movies telling black stories, our stories, that I’ve loved this year, films that have easily found a spot on my "best of" lists, including Let the Fire Burn, La...