“Daughters of the Dust”: Julie Dash’s 1991 lyrical, dreamlike drama about the Gullah women of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina in the early 1900s, was the first film directed by an African American woman to get a nationwide theatrical release. “Daughters of the Dust” (airing Sept. 23) continues to hold a special place in cinema history and in the hearts of moviegoers; it’s believed to have strongly inspired Beyonce’s “Lemonade.” Dash, inexplicably, was never given the chance to make another feature film. — Coyle

“Beau Travail”: Claire Denis’ loose adaptation of “Billy Budd” is a hallucinatory and balletic meditation on masculinity. Taking place at a French Foreign Legion outpost in Djibouti, “Beau Travail” (recently restored and currently playing in virtual theaters; airing Sept. 30 on TCM) uses the framework of Herman Melville’s fable for a study of ritual and repression. (Barry Jenkins has exalted the film’s influence on “Moonlight.”) The dialogue is spare and the story is secondary; it’s all in the movement and the bodies beneath the desert sun. — Coyle

“Daisies”: Chech director Věra Chytilová’s anarchic, exhilarating 76-minute feminist bacchanalia “Daisies” (airing Oct. 6), from 1966, has always been an acquired taste. Although loved by some from the beginning, it was banned from the major cinemas in her country and cut down by the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther who called it “pretentiously kookie and laboriously overblown.” But after being largely unavailable for years it too found a second life thanks to a 2009 restoration, a subsequent Criterion release and a new generation of fans. — Bahr