FEBRUARY 2025 DROPS RECAP
AWARDS SEASON, BLACK HISTORY MONTH & VALENTINE’S DAY!
Hello, ShotDeck community! February was a big month for us, with over 53,000 new shots added to our library from hundreds of films and television series. Sign up today for a free 2 week trial, or download our app from the App Store to get full access to the world’s largest library of cinematic reference images.
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This February, our selections included titles from this year’s Academy Award contenders, Rom-Coms through history, contemporary classics of television, and curations celebrating groundbreaking Black filmmakers. Here is an overview of what’s new on ShotDeck!
2025 OSCAR-NOMINATED FILMS
With the Oscars coming up next weekend, we’ve dropped thousands of shots from even more Awards season contenders for you to add to your decks. Check out stills from Oscar nominees Wicked Part 1, Nosferatu, The Substance, A Real Pain, A Different Man, and Anora.
And if you like those, check out the rest of our collection of this year’s Oscar nominees, live on ShotDeck: Nickel Boys, Emilia Pérez, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, The Wild Robot, Alien: Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Apprentice, Flow, Inside Out 2, and Maria.
OSCAR MICHEAUX
This month, ShotDeck curated a selection of films from trailblazing filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Widely regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, Michaeux wrote, directed and produced over 40 silent and sound films during the first half of the 20th century. His films studied contemporary Black life in all its nuances and complexities, opening audiences to perspectives never previously seen in American cinema and asking questions about race relations that were crucial to the advancement of civil and human rights. His understanding of the technical and storytelling tropes of mainstream Hollywood movies allowed him to bring movie stars on board his projects and find large audiences, with what appeared to be conventional genre films often revealing more complex and nuanced portrayals of racial issues in America.
Micheaux was also a pioneering businessman in the film industry. Not only did he write and direct his films, he produced, distributed and promoted them as well, laying pathways for independent filmmakers for generations to come. One of the few independent filmmakers to stay in business during the transition from silent to sound cinema, Micheaux was a savvy and charismatic promoter of his work, using his completed films (which he often distributed by hand to waiting theaters) as leverage to secure financing from investors for his next projects.
Check out our February collection of Oscar Micheaux films: the crime musical The Girl from Chicago, romantic drama Within Our Gates, musical Lying Lips, family drama God’s Step Children, and mystery film Murder in Harlem.
MARLON RIGGS
In February, we also curated a selection of 7 titles from filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist Marlon Riggs. Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Riggs received his master’s degree in journalism with a specialization in documentary filmmaking from the University of California, Berkeley, and began working on independent documentaries in the Bay Area in a variety of post-production roles.
By the time he began directing and producing himself, Riggs’s films sought to explore questions of race and sexuality in American society, examining and upending stereotypes. In 1991, Riggs founded Signifyin’ Works, a non-profit production company dedicated to producing films about Black history and culture.
ShotDeck has curated hundreds of shots from Riggs’s filmography, including his first feature film, Ethnic Notions, which explored persistent stereotypes of Black people in American popular culture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tongues Untied, selected for preservation in the US National Film Registry in 2022, blended documentary footage with poetry to shape a portrait of Black gay identity. Color Adjustment observed racial stereotypes of Black men in the broadcast age of prime-time television, Anthem, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and Affirmations were short films about Black male sexuality and homosexuality, and Black Is… Black Ain’t, completed after his death in 1994, was a celebration of the multiplicity of Black identity in America. Check out stills from all these titles on ShotDeck today!
rom-coms through history
To celebrate Valentine’s Day, we dropped thousands of shots from a curation of 20 Rom-Coms throughout history. Cuddle up on the couch with classics such as Roman Holiday, The Philadelphia Story and The Seven Year Itch, iconic 90’s entires How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Notting Hill, international favorites Thenali and Sidewalls, 2000’s gems 50 First Dates and 13 Going on 30, or modern-day hits The Edge of Seventeen and Anyone But You.
Explore the rest of our Rom-Coms through History drop and our collections of hundreds of romantic comedies on ShotDeck today!
TOP BOY
Britain’s biggest crime thriller series of this century is officially on ShotDeck! This month, we dropped over 6,000 shots from all 5 seasons of Top Boy. Created by Ronan Bennett and set in the fictional Summerhouse estate in Hackney, East London, Top Boy follows Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane Robinson), and their interlocking stories through the drug and gang violence of their communities. Top Boy began as a two-season series (now known as Top Boy: Summerhouse), before being renewed by Netflix as Top Boy for an additional three seasons.
Celebrated for its social realism and bold visual choices, Top Boy was shot by lead cinematographers Adam Scarth, Joe Anderson, Tat Radcliffe, Christopher Ross and Rina Yang using the Arri Alexa LF. Its look is characterized by its hand-held camera work, textural lighting and coloring choices, and sharp editorial style. Check it out on ShotDeck today!
