Thursday, May 6, 2010
Week #13--Post-millenial Expressions of African-American Cinematic Identity
I invite you to share your thoughts on Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy (2009).
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Week #12--New Media, Representation, and the Neglect of History
One of the most interesting observations of the period when Do the Right Thing (1989) was released is that it was the success of filmmakers such as Lee, John Singleton, and the Hughes Brothers that directed attention towards an earlier generation of Black filmmakers whose training in film schools and independent projects long preceded the boom of Black filmmakers in the early ‘90s. Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash would make their most prominent films during this period, in which they received a great deal of critical acclaim for their work, but an inconsistent following of Black moviegoers. The content of their films were a far departure from other mainstream Black-themed films. Dash and Gerima each released historical dramas about slavery and its haunting legacy regarding Black familial unions. Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, released throughout ’91 and ’92, focuses on a matriarch’s attempt to sustain the customs of her family based in the Gullah Sea Islands, as the younger generation relocates to mainland South Carolina. Shortly thereafter, Gerima released Sankofa, a film about a Black model who is transported by ancestral spirits to antebellum slavery in the United States. Unlike previous treatments, Gerima’s film provide the brutal details in which people of African descent were made into commodities, dehumanized through sexual assault (which would produce more “property”) and unspeakable expectations of labor. It was a daunting task for Dash to find a distributor, and it became more bittersweet in that an audience could not be cultivated despite the film’s critical acclaim. Gerima, however, established a do-it-yourself template for distributing his film, by renting out theater houses across the country to show his film because his film was continuously rejected by distributors. Burnett faced a fate similar to Dash with his film, To Sleep with Anger, which is about a Black family in Los Angeles whose generational conflicts are intensified when an old friend of the patriarch comes to visit. In spite of featuring a major movie star (Danny Glover) and receiving favorable reviews, Burnett’s film never was able to reach a consistent audience because of a failed strategy by the distributor. His follow-up film, The Glass Shield, had a more conventional narrative structure, and starred Ice Cube, by now a bankable movie star. A film about a young Black cop who is expected to conform to the crooked practices of the sheriff’s department when a young Black man is being framed for murder, it would nevertheless suffer the same fate as Burnett’s previous effort, in that its lack of availability to an audience caused the film to disappear into the ether.
Spike Lee’s Bamboozled is dependent on the idea that the mainstream viewing public has internalized a short-term memory of history, even amongst Black audience members themselves. Although the film demands a bit too much compliance to the premise so that his point can get across, Lee nevertheless reveals how even something as culturally deplorable as blackface and minstrelsy can be internalized into something that people become comfortable through mere commodification. The normalization of an art form deliberately use to dehumanize people of African descent becomes the industry standard to which Black performers must conform not even so much for stardom, but to earn a modest living. It begins to persists to the central culprits of the show: Pierre Delacroix, hyperperforming his own life as an upper-class Black professional, sees his idea initially as a backfire and then utilizes it as a “retroactive” compensation; Sloan is caught in a tension between her romance with the star of the show and her compliance to an idea she condemns; Womack and Man Ray finally having an opportunity to live the lavish life they dreamed of while living on the streets, yet their talents are confined to what will only appease both mass audiences and corporate profits.
The symposium organized by Cineaste magazine reflects the lasting legacy of Lee’s film, if not the director himself: an ambivalent response towards how the film exhausts itself with its subject matter, but provides a scrutinizing critique of how ideas are articulated, how culture is perceived, and how it is ultimately circulated as a commodity. Zeinabu Davis’ piece reflects that in spite of the pain she undergoes watching the film, both in the historical information it references and the overload of material it presents, she is still able to identify both the filmic strategies of Lee (i.e. the use of color) and the importance that a filmmaker as ubiquitous as he is was able to pursue a culturally loaded project. Greg Tate (a writer who I strongly recommend you follow—he’s often featured in the Village Voice) provides a critique that recognizes the film’s presentation of minstrelsy as currency for economic upward mobility, but questions whether it analyzes the dimensions of humanity beneath the façade of Blackface. Tate provides a profound argument, but I think it suggests that he overlooks the epiphanies that Womack and Man Ray come to when they realize how exhausting it is to maintain the level of success the show has accumulated, especially given how dehumanizing they feel in their temporary transformations. If anyone, a more effective question to raise about this depiction would be whether Lee could provide a more in-depth chronicle of each character’s transformation, expanding them beyond just stock characters to make a larger point about Black talent as a commodity in a corporate landscape.
Spike Lee’s Bamboozled is dependent on the idea that the mainstream viewing public has internalized a short-term memory of history, even amongst Black audience members themselves. Although the film demands a bit too much compliance to the premise so that his point can get across, Lee nevertheless reveals how even something as culturally deplorable as blackface and minstrelsy can be internalized into something that people become comfortable through mere commodification. The normalization of an art form deliberately use to dehumanize people of African descent becomes the industry standard to which Black performers must conform not even so much for stardom, but to earn a modest living. It begins to persists to the central culprits of the show: Pierre Delacroix, hyperperforming his own life as an upper-class Black professional, sees his idea initially as a backfire and then utilizes it as a “retroactive” compensation; Sloan is caught in a tension between her romance with the star of the show and her compliance to an idea she condemns; Womack and Man Ray finally having an opportunity to live the lavish life they dreamed of while living on the streets, yet their talents are confined to what will only appease both mass audiences and corporate profits.
The symposium organized by Cineaste magazine reflects the lasting legacy of Lee’s film, if not the director himself: an ambivalent response towards how the film exhausts itself with its subject matter, but provides a scrutinizing critique of how ideas are articulated, how culture is perceived, and how it is ultimately circulated as a commodity. Zeinabu Davis’ piece reflects that in spite of the pain she undergoes watching the film, both in the historical information it references and the overload of material it presents, she is still able to identify both the filmic strategies of Lee (i.e. the use of color) and the importance that a filmmaker as ubiquitous as he is was able to pursue a culturally loaded project. Greg Tate (a writer who I strongly recommend you follow—he’s often featured in the Village Voice) provides a critique that recognizes the film’s presentation of minstrelsy as currency for economic upward mobility, but questions whether it analyzes the dimensions of humanity beneath the façade of Blackface. Tate provides a profound argument, but I think it suggests that he overlooks the epiphanies that Womack and Man Ray come to when they realize how exhausting it is to maintain the level of success the show has accumulated, especially given how dehumanizing they feel in their temporary transformations. If anyone, a more effective question to raise about this depiction would be whether Lee could provide a more in-depth chronicle of each character’s transformation, expanding them beyond just stock characters to make a larger point about Black talent as a commodity in a corporate landscape.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Week #11--Renaissance of Contemporary African-American Cinema
The late 1980s and early 1990s offered films that centralized the Black gay male subject through the experimentation of documentary conventions. Isaac Julien’s Looking for Langston (1988) and Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied (1990) shift the focus of Black gay male identity from the periphery to the center in both a historical and contemporary context. Through the use of archival footage of early 20th century Harlem, a televised performance by Langston Hughes, and the brief voiceover narration of Stuart Hall, Julien uses familiar components of the documentary to create what he identifies as a meditation. This classification offers Julien the flexibility to both explore the sexual identity of Hughes and other male luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. The lack of cooperation from the poet’s estate limit Julien’s attempts to create a straightforward documentary, but he creates an opportunity to present 1920s Harlem in a funeral and a nightclub setting. Hughes is aligned with other Black gay male writers such as James Baldwin, Bruce Nugent, and Essex Hemphill, which enables Julien to shift back and forth from his dramatized presentation of Harlem nightlife to a dreamlike sequence that includes an ambiguous exterior setting and a sex scene that shifts between intra-racial and interracial sexual desire. In the segment that focuses on sexual intimacy, Julien uses the interracial component to address whether or not artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were legitimately celebrated for their offerings, or if the essence of their art was appropriated for a brief period of time. The final scene incorporates contemporary club music to illuminate the threat of anti-gay violence, signified by the mob of men who bang outside of the door. By utilizing new techniques with the documentary form, Looking for Langston offers a new insight into a prominent historical figure.
Riggs uses poetry in Tongues Untied to explore the many facets of present-day Black gay male identity (i.e. the late 1980s/early 1990s). The focus of the documentary often shifts from the collective burdens faced by Black gay men to Riggs’s personal reflections on fighting racism, homophobia, and complete isolation. While Riggs uses songs, poems, portraits, and monologues to address topical and intimate matters, one of his most effective conventions is the close-up that reveals one’s mouth, but conceals one’s eyes. One moment is the previously mentioned scene where Riggs talks about his childhood, and these close-ups are used to hurl slurs to reflect a violent infliction of identities. Later, Riggs applies these shots to confront the homophobic perspectives from the Black community, most notably the church and Black activists. Riggs intercuts clips from Eddie Murphy’s concert films Delirious and Raw, plus Spike Lee’s School Daze to illustrate how Black popular culture reinforces the condemnation of Black gay men.
Spike Lee has attracted criticism throughout his career for offering a point of view through his films that rarely privileges women or people from the LGBT community. His third feature film, Do the Right Thing (1989), may not do much to silence these concerns, but the film significantly continues Lee’s attempts to offer a new representation of African-American life in mainstream American cinema. On the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn (New York City), Lee not only centralizes both historical and topic issues that concern African Americans, but he does so through the cinematic techniques he employs. As you watch the film, consider how it opens, and how the dance sequence and the setting anticipate what takes place throughout. Also, identify how different spaces are established in the neighborhood by different demographics. How does Lee utilize editing and cinematography, particularly shot/reverse shot and direct address to the camera, when confrontational moments arise? Also with editing and cinematography, how does Lee incorporate mise-en-scene in both interior and exterior shots, and how does the placement of characters and objects reflect the climate of the neighborhood (literally and figuratively)?
Riggs uses poetry in Tongues Untied to explore the many facets of present-day Black gay male identity (i.e. the late 1980s/early 1990s). The focus of the documentary often shifts from the collective burdens faced by Black gay men to Riggs’s personal reflections on fighting racism, homophobia, and complete isolation. While Riggs uses songs, poems, portraits, and monologues to address topical and intimate matters, one of his most effective conventions is the close-up that reveals one’s mouth, but conceals one’s eyes. One moment is the previously mentioned scene where Riggs talks about his childhood, and these close-ups are used to hurl slurs to reflect a violent infliction of identities. Later, Riggs applies these shots to confront the homophobic perspectives from the Black community, most notably the church and Black activists. Riggs intercuts clips from Eddie Murphy’s concert films Delirious and Raw, plus Spike Lee’s School Daze to illustrate how Black popular culture reinforces the condemnation of Black gay men.
Spike Lee has attracted criticism throughout his career for offering a point of view through his films that rarely privileges women or people from the LGBT community. His third feature film, Do the Right Thing (1989), may not do much to silence these concerns, but the film significantly continues Lee’s attempts to offer a new representation of African-American life in mainstream American cinema. On the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn (New York City), Lee not only centralizes both historical and topic issues that concern African Americans, but he does so through the cinematic techniques he employs. As you watch the film, consider how it opens, and how the dance sequence and the setting anticipate what takes place throughout. Also, identify how different spaces are established in the neighborhood by different demographics. How does Lee utilize editing and cinematography, particularly shot/reverse shot and direct address to the camera, when confrontational moments arise? Also with editing and cinematography, how does Lee incorporate mise-en-scene in both interior and exterior shots, and how does the placement of characters and objects reflect the climate of the neighborhood (literally and figuratively)?
Friday, April 16, 2010
Week #10--Blackness and Sexuality
In her film The Watermelon Woman (1996), Cheryl Dunye portrays a filmmaker who uses the documentary medium to investigate the identity of a Black female actor from the early sound era of Hollywood. Through the documentary medium, Cheryl discovers not only her real name, but the community from which she emerged, a wider knowledge of her film career, and the personal relationships she had throughout her life. Cheryl is able to identify parallels between her and her subject, Fae Richards, in terms of being a Black lesbian working in the film medium, plus being involved in an interracial relationship. Cheryl uses documentary conventions such as picture stills and talking head interviews to both present her subject and chronicle her own journey to identifying herself as a filmmaker. Through the ambitious task of making a film, Cheryl comes to learn that there is as much work demanded to learn about the character one possesses in their pursuit of the objective he/she ultimately wants to achieve, even if it means breaking relationships that develop over time (i.e. Diana), testing the lengths of one’s friendship (i.e. Tamara), or resurrecting demons from the past (i.e. June Walker).
After the documentary is presented in the film’s ending credits, Dunye reveals that the project’s subject is entirely fictional. In her analysis of Watermelon, Thelma Willis Foote describes it as a hoax, which implies that the viewer is ultimately deceived throughout its entire duration. What further contributes to the initial response upon the revelation is that no hints are given that “The Watermelon Woman” does not exist, and the viewer can safely assume that Cheryl just so happens to seamlessly parallel her discovery of Fae’s relationship with her White director, Martha Page, with the intensifying romance between her and Diana. As she drops this bombshell at the film’s conclusion, she begins her statement by saying, “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” This is consistent to how Cheryl introduces herself to the audience, uncertain of whether or not she has earned the credentials to affirm herself as a filmmaker. As she thinks about what she wants to make her film about, she makes it clear that it has to be about Black women because, as she puts it, “…our stories have never been told.” Through the use of what is learned to be a mockumentary, Dunye points to a larger issue: the urgency of memory and recovery of the past, particularly topics that are embedded within the periphery.
When Julie Dash decided that she wanted to set Daughters of the Dust in South Carolina, near the area known as Ibo Landing, she reveals that her family members were reluctant to disclose details about their past. In the film within the film, Cheryl faces opposition from both Tamara, who rejects the notion that Black female actors confined to playing “mammy” roles are a worthy subject matter, and Fae’s partner, June, who finds Cheryl’s attempt to explore Fae’s romance with Martha a misrepresentation of Fae’s legacy. Cheryl courageously challenges both women in her validation of the aspects of Fae’s life neither wants to confront, which further affirms her self-recognition as a filmmaker. Two experimental documentaries also touch upon sensitive subject matter, particularly in regards to the place of Black gay male identity in a larger Black collective identity. In Looking for Langston (1988), Isaac Julien seeks to explore Langston Hughes’s sexual identity and his romantic relationships with fellow artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. By centralizing Hughes’s sexuality in his documentary, even at the displeasure of his estate, Julien also incorporates the work of James Baldwin, Bruce Nugent, and Essex Hemphill to establish a legacy of poetry by Black gay men that has gone often ignored. Hemphill’s poems are also featured in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1990). Riggs uses his own discovery as a gay man and ways in which his voice was silence to both identify transgressions gay Black men face, notably isolation from segments of the Black community, physical violence, and stereotyping within White gay popular culture. Ultimately, Riggs uses Tongues to encourage Black gay men to speak out against forces designed to subjugate then. As you watch both films, identify some of the conventions used in this film that differ from more familiar uses of the documentary medium. What is contained in the content of the poetry featured in each film, and what are some the images used to complement these works? How would you describe the overall structure of each of these films, and in what ways are images and sounds juxtaposed to centralize Black gay male sexuality in terms of romance and threats they face?
After the documentary is presented in the film’s ending credits, Dunye reveals that the project’s subject is entirely fictional. In her analysis of Watermelon, Thelma Willis Foote describes it as a hoax, which implies that the viewer is ultimately deceived throughout its entire duration. What further contributes to the initial response upon the revelation is that no hints are given that “The Watermelon Woman” does not exist, and the viewer can safely assume that Cheryl just so happens to seamlessly parallel her discovery of Fae’s relationship with her White director, Martha Page, with the intensifying romance between her and Diana. As she drops this bombshell at the film’s conclusion, she begins her statement by saying, “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” This is consistent to how Cheryl introduces herself to the audience, uncertain of whether or not she has earned the credentials to affirm herself as a filmmaker. As she thinks about what she wants to make her film about, she makes it clear that it has to be about Black women because, as she puts it, “…our stories have never been told.” Through the use of what is learned to be a mockumentary, Dunye points to a larger issue: the urgency of memory and recovery of the past, particularly topics that are embedded within the periphery.
When Julie Dash decided that she wanted to set Daughters of the Dust in South Carolina, near the area known as Ibo Landing, she reveals that her family members were reluctant to disclose details about their past. In the film within the film, Cheryl faces opposition from both Tamara, who rejects the notion that Black female actors confined to playing “mammy” roles are a worthy subject matter, and Fae’s partner, June, who finds Cheryl’s attempt to explore Fae’s romance with Martha a misrepresentation of Fae’s legacy. Cheryl courageously challenges both women in her validation of the aspects of Fae’s life neither wants to confront, which further affirms her self-recognition as a filmmaker. Two experimental documentaries also touch upon sensitive subject matter, particularly in regards to the place of Black gay male identity in a larger Black collective identity. In Looking for Langston (1988), Isaac Julien seeks to explore Langston Hughes’s sexual identity and his romantic relationships with fellow artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. By centralizing Hughes’s sexuality in his documentary, even at the displeasure of his estate, Julien also incorporates the work of James Baldwin, Bruce Nugent, and Essex Hemphill to establish a legacy of poetry by Black gay men that has gone often ignored. Hemphill’s poems are also featured in Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1990). Riggs uses his own discovery as a gay man and ways in which his voice was silence to both identify transgressions gay Black men face, notably isolation from segments of the Black community, physical violence, and stereotyping within White gay popular culture. Ultimately, Riggs uses Tongues to encourage Black gay men to speak out against forces designed to subjugate then. As you watch both films, identify some of the conventions used in this film that differ from more familiar uses of the documentary medium. What is contained in the content of the poetry featured in each film, and what are some the images used to complement these works? How would you describe the overall structure of each of these films, and in what ways are images and sounds juxtaposed to centralize Black gay male sexuality in terms of romance and threats they face?
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Week #9--Confronting and Rewriting History
In Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash seeks to create a historical narrative in which a collective female identity is established. The central conflict in the film is that Nana, the matriarch of the Peazant family has concerns about whether or not they will retain their Gullah roots as they move into the mainland. Two women closely relate to Nana and her efforts to preserve the family. Yellow Mary is the prodigal daughter who returns to Ibo Landing after being sexually violated throughout her travels. Eula has lived in Ibo Landing her entire life, and she faces tremendous conflict with her husband, Eli, after he learns that she was raped. The incident drives him to question the worth of Nana’s traditions if they were not able to protect his wife. For both women, Nana is the only woman who offers love and comfort without any judgment. There are also women who think that it is best to distance themselves from Nana’s traditions as far as possible. Haagar married into the Peazant family, and she sees their entrance into the mainland as an opportunity to dispel many of the rituals she condemns as archaic. Nana’s granddaughter, Viola, has become a born-again Christian since returning from the mainland, and she is responsible for bringing Mr. Snead, a photographer who documents the family’s departure. He serves as the film’s example of self-reflexivity, in which some reference is made to the filmmaking process, albeit a still camera. Within the diegetic world, Snead captures each member of the family and learns more about the history of the Gullah People and Ibo Landing. Outside of the narrative, Dash is very much doing the same way, in which she is challenging the viewer’s orientation not only with the history of African Americans before the 20th century, but with seeing African Americans onscreen as well.
In terms of history, Dash’s uses different kinds of iconography to reflect slavery, such as hands and clothes stained with indigo, to reflect when Nana and other enslaved Africans worked on an indigo plantation. Dash also uses a large wood carving to represent a dismantled slave ship, which holds tremendous resonance when Eli pushes it away to reflect how he has come to terms with what happened with his wife, and his acknowledgment that she is carrying their child. These references to slavery also reinforce why Nana deems it important to keep her family together, because the “peculiar institution” separated families when Africans were brought to America and subjected to enslavement. Eli and Eula’s reconciliation affirms that the Peazant family will remain intact, something that is preserved by the presence of the Unborn Child.
Dash’s film is set at the turn of the century, as the Peazant family departs for the mainland of South Carolina during the summer of 1902. Her engagement with history in this film is preceded by her short film, Illusions (1983), set during World War II. It focuses on Mignon Dupree, a studio executive assistant who is assigned to correct a sync error in an upcoming movie, where she recruits a young Black singer to sing in place of the White actress who stars in the project. Dash’s short, shot in black and white, is a retelling of the passing narrative, in which Mignon is a light-skinned Black woman who (unintentionally) passes for White, which grants her an agency to help make some important decisions at the studio. Like Dash, Cheryl Dunye explores film history to recover and preserve the presence of Black women. In The Watermelon Woman (1996), Dunye portrays herself as an aspiring filmmaker who decides to search for the identity of a Black actress who portrayed mammy characters in Hollywood movies during the 1930s. As you watch the film, how does Cheryl determine that this will be the subject of her film, and how does this relate to her identity as a filmmaker? How does the use of direct address to the camera help reveal about Cheryl’s development as an artist? What other information does she learn about the period in which the Watermelon Woman was a notable figure? How do parts of the Watermelon Woman’s biography parallel with Cheryl’s life? At the film’s conclusion, how does Dunye use documentary conventions, and what revelation is made to question whether or not the non-fiction medium is reliable?
In terms of history, Dash’s uses different kinds of iconography to reflect slavery, such as hands and clothes stained with indigo, to reflect when Nana and other enslaved Africans worked on an indigo plantation. Dash also uses a large wood carving to represent a dismantled slave ship, which holds tremendous resonance when Eli pushes it away to reflect how he has come to terms with what happened with his wife, and his acknowledgment that she is carrying their child. These references to slavery also reinforce why Nana deems it important to keep her family together, because the “peculiar institution” separated families when Africans were brought to America and subjected to enslavement. Eli and Eula’s reconciliation affirms that the Peazant family will remain intact, something that is preserved by the presence of the Unborn Child.
Dash’s film is set at the turn of the century, as the Peazant family departs for the mainland of South Carolina during the summer of 1902. Her engagement with history in this film is preceded by her short film, Illusions (1983), set during World War II. It focuses on Mignon Dupree, a studio executive assistant who is assigned to correct a sync error in an upcoming movie, where she recruits a young Black singer to sing in place of the White actress who stars in the project. Dash’s short, shot in black and white, is a retelling of the passing narrative, in which Mignon is a light-skinned Black woman who (unintentionally) passes for White, which grants her an agency to help make some important decisions at the studio. Like Dash, Cheryl Dunye explores film history to recover and preserve the presence of Black women. In The Watermelon Woman (1996), Dunye portrays herself as an aspiring filmmaker who decides to search for the identity of a Black actress who portrayed mammy characters in Hollywood movies during the 1930s. As you watch the film, how does Cheryl determine that this will be the subject of her film, and how does this relate to her identity as a filmmaker? How does the use of direct address to the camera help reveal about Cheryl’s development as an artist? What other information does she learn about the period in which the Watermelon Woman was a notable figure? How do parts of the Watermelon Woman’s biography parallel with Cheryl’s life? At the film’s conclusion, how does Dunye use documentary conventions, and what revelation is made to question whether or not the non-fiction medium is reliable?
Week #8--Women Filmmakers
In The Passion of Remembrance (1986), Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective combine documentary and fiction conventions to reflect a present a multifaceted identification of Blackness. Both filmmakers use three storylines to establish an inclusive presence of gender and sexuality in past and present discourse about how Black Britons identify themselves. Blackwood and Julien introduce a male and a female to establish their positions in terms of how identity is determined, as well as stagnated. Their stances lead to intense conflict when they share the same space, as the male speaker’s impulse to dominate is countered by the female speaker’s continuous interrogation. Their disputes transfer into the film’s more conventional storyline, in which Maggie often challenges the issues discussed by her father, Benjy, and her uncle, Tony, with respect to normative gender roles and their condemnation of LGBT identity. An aspiring filmmaker, Maggie’s work features footage from demonstrations for workers’ rights and LGBT rights, some of them resulting in physical altercations with aggressive force by the police. Her films serve as another storyline, where she takes images widely circulated through news media and places them within another context through color saturation and rapid editing. These images are an example of self-reflexivity, in that Maggie’s works are very reflective of the kind of films and videos artists of the Black British Film Workshop movement produced.
Black British filmmakers emerged in the early ‘80s as topics such as neo-fascist attacks on Black immigrant residents and questions of police brutality at the Carnival celebrations were brought to the forefront at the beginning of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister of Great Britain. The films and videos that came out of film and video collectives such as Black Audio, Ceddo, and Sankofa proved to be a subversive counterpart to the dominant images circulated through popular media in both form and content. A majority of documentaries were made from the perspective of Black Britons. Many of these residents emigrated from the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Asia. Previous Black filmmakers whose roots trace to these spaces were making films in Great Britain for at least a decade, yet artists from the Film Workshop section were still seen as very new and appreciated simply for producing images of Black people. Their work provided a crucial source by enabling these populations to tell their own stories, in spite of the fact that their experimental and theoretical approaches raised questions about the accessibility of their work. These filmmakers may have not been granted full reception at times because of their cinematic strategies, but their objectives was to transfer from what Kobena Mercer would call a monologic identity, in which Black identity was confined to a singular agenda, to a dialogic identity, an embrace of multiple voices and representations of how Black people determine their identity privately and publicly.
More vocal efforts to include women within a diasporic Black cultural discourse have been pursued since the years that immediately follow the Black Power movement. The efforts of Black British filmmakers to present issues once condemned by the more aggressively masculine endorsements of Black identity continued what had been pursued by Black women writers, tracing back to the 1970s. Black women filmmakers also attempted to penetrate these positions, often through nonconventional forms of storytelling. Experimentation with narrative structure is most present at Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash’s film about a family’s departure from the coast of South Carolina at the turn of the 20th century. Similar to the efforts of Black British filmmakers, Dash seeks to include multiple voices and stories that contribute to a collective identity shared amongst Black women. The family’s matriarch, Nana Peazant, has tirelessly sought to preserve the traditions of the Gullah people on Ibo Landing for many years, and as efforts are made to move to the mainland, her objective is to make sure that her family’s traditions are preserved. As you watch the film, think of why Nana is concerned about the family’s anticipated departure. Also consider whose stories are at the center of the narrative, and how each of their personal dilemmas relates to Nana’s objective. In addition, identify some of the women who counter Nana’s traditions and their reasons for migrating to the mainland.
Black British filmmakers emerged in the early ‘80s as topics such as neo-fascist attacks on Black immigrant residents and questions of police brutality at the Carnival celebrations were brought to the forefront at the beginning of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister of Great Britain. The films and videos that came out of film and video collectives such as Black Audio, Ceddo, and Sankofa proved to be a subversive counterpart to the dominant images circulated through popular media in both form and content. A majority of documentaries were made from the perspective of Black Britons. Many of these residents emigrated from the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Asia. Previous Black filmmakers whose roots trace to these spaces were making films in Great Britain for at least a decade, yet artists from the Film Workshop section were still seen as very new and appreciated simply for producing images of Black people. Their work provided a crucial source by enabling these populations to tell their own stories, in spite of the fact that their experimental and theoretical approaches raised questions about the accessibility of their work. These filmmakers may have not been granted full reception at times because of their cinematic strategies, but their objectives was to transfer from what Kobena Mercer would call a monologic identity, in which Black identity was confined to a singular agenda, to a dialogic identity, an embrace of multiple voices and representations of how Black people determine their identity privately and publicly.
More vocal efforts to include women within a diasporic Black cultural discourse have been pursued since the years that immediately follow the Black Power movement. The efforts of Black British filmmakers to present issues once condemned by the more aggressively masculine endorsements of Black identity continued what had been pursued by Black women writers, tracing back to the 1970s. Black women filmmakers also attempted to penetrate these positions, often through nonconventional forms of storytelling. Experimentation with narrative structure is most present at Daughters of the Dust (1991), Julie Dash’s film about a family’s departure from the coast of South Carolina at the turn of the 20th century. Similar to the efforts of Black British filmmakers, Dash seeks to include multiple voices and stories that contribute to a collective identity shared amongst Black women. The family’s matriarch, Nana Peazant, has tirelessly sought to preserve the traditions of the Gullah people on Ibo Landing for many years, and as efforts are made to move to the mainland, her objective is to make sure that her family’s traditions are preserved. As you watch the film, think of why Nana is concerned about the family’s anticipated departure. Also consider whose stories are at the center of the narrative, and how each of their personal dilemmas relates to Nana’s objective. In addition, identify some of the women who counter Nana’s traditions and their reasons for migrating to the mainland.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Week #7--Black British Cinema
Last week’s examples of Caribbean cinema were documentaries that focused on two prominent writers of the Caribbean and postcolonial theory: Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, both of whom are from Martinique. In her documentary Aimé Césaire: A Voice for History, Euzhan Palcy devotes the first of a three-part series on how her subject came to emergence, first as a poet, then as a teacher, and ultimately as mayor of Fort-de-France, the capital city of Martinique. Palcy’s documentary captures the tension that Césaire faced in his attempts to transition from being a surrealist poet and a member of the French Communist Party to deciding as mayor what Martinique’s ties should be to France. A lucid observation that Césaire makes is that countries who had become independent had adopted its own brand of totalitarianism (Haiti and the Duvalier regimes), while Communist countries were adopting the same identity. Isaac Julien’s Black Skin, White Mask considers how Fanon psychoanalyzed of colonial relations, particularly the complex presence of desire in the colonist gaze that demands the colonized subject to be condemned. Fanon’s experience in psychoanalysis was crucial to his experience in Algeria, in which he examined the state of de-personalization his patients had undergone, where all notions of agency had been diminished. He would identify violence as the only strategy through which a sense of agency could be attained. Julien’s unconventional structure, in which he combines found footage, talking head interviews, and a dramatization of Fanon’s writings, also grants him some space to interrogate his subject’s blind spots. Julien points to areas in the book Black Skin, White Masks where Fanon looks condescendingly on Black women and homosexuals, which raises questions about whether or not Fanon had deeply internalized the notion of privilege upon which he had criticized the European colonizers.
Returning to Palcy for a moment, her documentary, plus her feature-length debut, Sugar Cane Alley (1983), are both examples of how film is used to instill a pan-Caribbean contemporary identity that is determined by its engagement with history. The historical presence of both Martinique’s early history (through the adaptation of the novel Rue Cases-Négres) and the recognition of ancestral African identity points to a lack of centrality in both Caribbean identity and Caribbean cinema. Both Keith Warner and June Givanni’s interview with Palcy point to the reality that Caribbean-based filmmakers have to work outside of their home country in order to obtain resources to make their film. Palcy talks specifically about the fact that in spite of a film festival in the Caribbean, there still remains no Caribbean film industry that preserves the production, distribution, and exhibition resources for Caribbean filmmakers. These artists, similar to African filmmakers, have to both compete with movies from U.S. and Western Europe that dominate the theaters, plus combat the stigma that their films are inferior simply because they are from a Caribbean country.
For Black British filmmakers during the 1980s, what they found most at stake was the interrogation of history specific to England and the African diaspora, and new ways to make their films and distribute them. The Black filmmaking workshop movement consisted of two collectives: Sankofa and Black Audio. Both of these collectives marked at the point the most significant presence of media-makers who were of African descent. While their films were an immediate response to the climate of tension and political unrest during Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister, they also interrogate the cultural memory of Black Britons to assert a more inclusive space for women and the LGBT community. These filmmakers were part of the first generation to be born in England, as their parents emigrated from West Africa and the Caribbean. In The Passion of Remembrance (1986) by Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien, think of how the different storylines throughout the film reflect the attempts to challenge the masculinization of Black consciousness, the increasing neo-fascist sentiment growing throughout the country, and the inclusion of sexuality within the Black Briton collective identity. What is the relationship between the film’s narrative and meta-narrative, in terms of the questions being raised and what the central characters face?
The Passion of Remembrance (1986)
Dirs. Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien
Cast:
Anni Domingo Female Speaker
Joseph Charles Male Speaker
Antonia Thomas Maggie Baptiste
Carlton Chance Gary
Jim Findlay Tony Baptiste
Ram John Holder Benjy Baptiste
Shiela Mitchell Glory Baptiste
Tania Morgan Tonia
Gary McDonald Michael
Janet Palmer Louise
Questions to consider while watching The Passion of Remembrance:
1. Identify the three different storylines that occur concurrently in this film. How do they all relate to one another?
2. How would you characterize the relationship between the male speaker and the female speaker? What do you notice when they share a space, and when they are in their separate spaces?
3. What do you notice about the images in Maggie’s films in terms of the relationship between image and sound? Based on the readings from Fusco and Mercer, what events do they reference, and how do the viewers of her work respond to her content?
4. What are some of the topics by which Maggie and Tony argue about? How would you describe Tony’s position, and how does Maggie challenge his arguments?
Returning to Palcy for a moment, her documentary, plus her feature-length debut, Sugar Cane Alley (1983), are both examples of how film is used to instill a pan-Caribbean contemporary identity that is determined by its engagement with history. The historical presence of both Martinique’s early history (through the adaptation of the novel Rue Cases-Négres) and the recognition of ancestral African identity points to a lack of centrality in both Caribbean identity and Caribbean cinema. Both Keith Warner and June Givanni’s interview with Palcy point to the reality that Caribbean-based filmmakers have to work outside of their home country in order to obtain resources to make their film. Palcy talks specifically about the fact that in spite of a film festival in the Caribbean, there still remains no Caribbean film industry that preserves the production, distribution, and exhibition resources for Caribbean filmmakers. These artists, similar to African filmmakers, have to both compete with movies from U.S. and Western Europe that dominate the theaters, plus combat the stigma that their films are inferior simply because they are from a Caribbean country.
For Black British filmmakers during the 1980s, what they found most at stake was the interrogation of history specific to England and the African diaspora, and new ways to make their films and distribute them. The Black filmmaking workshop movement consisted of two collectives: Sankofa and Black Audio. Both of these collectives marked at the point the most significant presence of media-makers who were of African descent. While their films were an immediate response to the climate of tension and political unrest during Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister, they also interrogate the cultural memory of Black Britons to assert a more inclusive space for women and the LGBT community. These filmmakers were part of the first generation to be born in England, as their parents emigrated from West Africa and the Caribbean. In The Passion of Remembrance (1986) by Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien, think of how the different storylines throughout the film reflect the attempts to challenge the masculinization of Black consciousness, the increasing neo-fascist sentiment growing throughout the country, and the inclusion of sexuality within the Black Briton collective identity. What is the relationship between the film’s narrative and meta-narrative, in terms of the questions being raised and what the central characters face?
The Passion of Remembrance (1986)
Dirs. Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien
Cast:
Anni Domingo Female Speaker
Joseph Charles Male Speaker
Antonia Thomas Maggie Baptiste
Carlton Chance Gary
Jim Findlay Tony Baptiste
Ram John Holder Benjy Baptiste
Shiela Mitchell Glory Baptiste
Tania Morgan Tonia
Gary McDonald Michael
Janet Palmer Louise
Questions to consider while watching The Passion of Remembrance:
1. Identify the three different storylines that occur concurrently in this film. How do they all relate to one another?
2. How would you characterize the relationship between the male speaker and the female speaker? What do you notice when they share a space, and when they are in their separate spaces?
3. What do you notice about the images in Maggie’s films in terms of the relationship between image and sound? Based on the readings from Fusco and Mercer, what events do they reference, and how do the viewers of her work respond to her content?
4. What are some of the topics by which Maggie and Tony argue about? How would you describe Tony’s position, and how does Maggie challenge his arguments?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Week #6—Films of the Caribbean
As a native of Ethiopia who was reared through storytelling and trained in the theatre, Haile Gerima arrived as a student at UCLA’s Theatre Arts department in 1968 to learn how he could transfer his skills to the cinematic medium. Gerima and his African and African-American colleagues, most notably Charles Burnett, were very much products of their time, in that they were deeply engaged in the political and creative activity of the period marked by the Black Power and Black Arts movements. The filmmakers of the L.A. School merged their formal training at UCLA with their self-guided curriculum driven by inquiries about what it meant to make a Black film. Efforts were made to create a new cinematic language that would privilege people of African descent through form, content, and image. Conventions from other filmmaking movements, notably African and Latin American cinema, were transcribed to document the lives of African-American residents in the Watts section of Los Angeles. With respect to Latin American cinema, namely Cuban cinema, filmmakers from UCLA, also known as the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers, or the L.A. Rebellion, learned to utilize portable 16mm filmmaking equipment to document the region as they were and capture footage that would merge fiction and documentary conventions. The conventions of Cuban cinema (i.e. B&W film stock, handheld portable cameras, natural lighting, location shooting, post-dubbed sound) were derived from Italian Neo-realism, a film movement that emerged during WWII when the destruction of studios forced filmmakers to shoot on location and depict moments throughout Italy as they were happening.
An artist immersed in the writings of Third World Marxism by way of Frantz Fanon from Martinique and Amilcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau, Gerima was most concerned with the relationship between race and class to enforce systemic suppression. Bush Mama (1975) centralizes Dorothy, a widowed single mother dependent on welfare, as a character that undergoes a transformation from passive victim to an agent of change for herself, her daughter, and her immediate community. Gerima identifies the welfare system, law enforcement, and the government (i.e. recruitment into the Vietnam War) as the institutional forces that keep residents in Watts like Dorothy and her neighbors economically and emotionally deprived. The presence of these institutions are immediately felt at the opening of the film, as the soundtrack, which layers helicopter choppers, a police dispatcher, and a social worker that asks questions about welfare benefits, are matched with the camera zooming in on the film’s title, written on a brick wall. Gerima also captures Dorothy’s transformation through subjective reality, as his repetitive use of image and sound function as a loop to illustrate the way in which she processes each dilemma she faces. Throughout the film, Dorothy’s presence within the diegetic world is intercut with images that appear to emerge from her psyche.
Gerima and his colleagues made films set in Watts that were said to capture domestic colonialism, in which overwhelmingly Black, densely-populated urban areas were isolated from both governmental resources that would resuscitate the neighborhood’s economy and overall morale and political progress brought upon by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The filmmakers also sought to identify the situation of African Americans as part of a global struggle towards liberation. In her documentary Aime Cesaire: A Voice for History, Euzhan Palcy captures the life of the poet and politician based in Martinique. She captures how Cesaire argued for self-autonomy amongst the citizens of Martinique as a poet and, later, as the mayor of Fort-de-France, the country’s capital. Throughout the documentary, focus on how Palcy depicts Cesaire’s initiation as an artist and how he sought to inspire Martinique’s citizens as a poet and a teacher by establishing a spiritual connection with ancestral Africa. Later, think of how Cesaire seeks to negotiate his reputation as a poet with his duties as Fort-de-France’s mayor, and how his overall legacy is threatened by his conflicting views towards colonialism in terms of Martinique’s relationship with France.
An artist immersed in the writings of Third World Marxism by way of Frantz Fanon from Martinique and Amilcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau, Gerima was most concerned with the relationship between race and class to enforce systemic suppression. Bush Mama (1975) centralizes Dorothy, a widowed single mother dependent on welfare, as a character that undergoes a transformation from passive victim to an agent of change for herself, her daughter, and her immediate community. Gerima identifies the welfare system, law enforcement, and the government (i.e. recruitment into the Vietnam War) as the institutional forces that keep residents in Watts like Dorothy and her neighbors economically and emotionally deprived. The presence of these institutions are immediately felt at the opening of the film, as the soundtrack, which layers helicopter choppers, a police dispatcher, and a social worker that asks questions about welfare benefits, are matched with the camera zooming in on the film’s title, written on a brick wall. Gerima also captures Dorothy’s transformation through subjective reality, as his repetitive use of image and sound function as a loop to illustrate the way in which she processes each dilemma she faces. Throughout the film, Dorothy’s presence within the diegetic world is intercut with images that appear to emerge from her psyche.
Gerima and his colleagues made films set in Watts that were said to capture domestic colonialism, in which overwhelmingly Black, densely-populated urban areas were isolated from both governmental resources that would resuscitate the neighborhood’s economy and overall morale and political progress brought upon by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. The filmmakers also sought to identify the situation of African Americans as part of a global struggle towards liberation. In her documentary Aime Cesaire: A Voice for History, Euzhan Palcy captures the life of the poet and politician based in Martinique. She captures how Cesaire argued for self-autonomy amongst the citizens of Martinique as a poet and, later, as the mayor of Fort-de-France, the country’s capital. Throughout the documentary, focus on how Palcy depicts Cesaire’s initiation as an artist and how he sought to inspire Martinique’s citizens as a poet and a teacher by establishing a spiritual connection with ancestral Africa. Later, think of how Cesaire seeks to negotiate his reputation as a poet with his duties as Fort-de-France’s mayor, and how his overall legacy is threatened by his conflicting views towards colonialism in terms of Martinique’s relationship with France.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Week #5—Challenging Revamped Stereotypes of Hollywood
For roughly two decades, there was not a film by an African-American filmmaker to found. It wasn’t until 1969 that Gordon Parks would direct an adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. Interestingly enough, Parks’s follow-up film, Shaft (1971) would be released on the heels of the success that came from Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, released earlier that year. As demonstrated in the colloquy on Black Cinema Aesthetics, Sweetback is a polarizing film, in that there are as many people who celebrate the film for its consistency with the sentiments of the Black Power and Black Arts movement as there are critics who condemn it as a sex exploitation movie. One of the film’s critics was Haile Gerima, an Ethiopian-born filmmaker who studied film production at UCLA. Gerima argued that Van Peebles’s film provided an illusion of empowerment, in that the beating of two police officers does not lead to the structural changes that eliminate the forces that oppress Black people.
The more sensational aspects of sex and violence for which Sweetback was criticized would be appropriated by Hollywood studios when they learned that Van Peebles’ film grossed $10 million dollars in spite of being made with no mainstream funding sources. Studios also noticed that 30-40 percent of the moviegoing audience was Black, which made them more enthusiastic about making Black-themed action movies. The motion picture industry was in a financial slump, as it faced competition from television for a decade. Studios were also producing outdated westerns and musicals, which gave the impression that they were out of touch with the public. The financial success of Sweetback prompted Hollywood to even take projects meant for White stars to be used for Black actors, hence was the case with Shaft. Other films would follow such as Superfly (1972) starring Ron O’Neal, The Mack (1973) with Max Julien, and Black Caesar (1974), which featured Fred Williamson. As the films would become more popular, they were also met with increasing criticism for using hyper-masculine protagonist who engaged in excessive sex and violence with no consequence. Similar to Gerima’s criticism of Sweetback as giving the illusion of empowerment, social critics and activists argued that these movies offered a vicarious sense of conquering an oppressive system, but they were never able to escape their situation. It is said that as these criticisms increased, the movies, which came to be known as blaxploitation flicks, would decrease in popularity. In addition, many other movies of inferior quality would flood the genre and contribute to its demise by the mid-‘70s.
In 1975, Gerima would release Bush Mama, which was his thesis film to complete his Master’s of Fine Arts at UCLA. The film focuses on Dorothy, a widowed single mother dependent on welfare. As she becomes impregnated by her current boyfriend, T.C., she is pressured by her case worker to abort her child so that she can continue to receive benefits. At first glance, there are some commonalities that could be found between Bush Mama and Sweetback. Both films feature a character who transforms from a passive victim of his/her circumstances to someone in full control of their agency. They also take place in the Watts section of Los Angeles, and each employs non-conventional film techniques that reference Third Cinema, French New Wave, and Italian Neo-realism. The major difference between these films lies in the distinction between the individual and the collective. Sweetback’s initial awakening of consciousness comes from helping a local revolutionary activist escape from police custody after beating the cops unconsciousness, but he remains isolated throughout the film. Dorothy undergoes tremendous internal examination to become engaged in her own well-being, but her personal situation reflects the community at large, as they attempt to survive under aggressive systematic suppression from the police and the welfare state. As you watch the film, think of ways in which Dorothy’s transformation is visible. Also, pay attention to how some of Dorothy’s immediate contacts impact her transformation positively and negatively. In addition, think of what Gerima does differently in terms of editing and sound. Consider how Gerima cuts scenes in and out of the diegetic world, and what the relationship between the images symbolizes. Also, think of the different sources of sound within the film’s soundtrack. How do they reflect both the external and internal forces that pressure Dorothy?
The more sensational aspects of sex and violence for which Sweetback was criticized would be appropriated by Hollywood studios when they learned that Van Peebles’ film grossed $10 million dollars in spite of being made with no mainstream funding sources. Studios also noticed that 30-40 percent of the moviegoing audience was Black, which made them more enthusiastic about making Black-themed action movies. The motion picture industry was in a financial slump, as it faced competition from television for a decade. Studios were also producing outdated westerns and musicals, which gave the impression that they were out of touch with the public. The financial success of Sweetback prompted Hollywood to even take projects meant for White stars to be used for Black actors, hence was the case with Shaft. Other films would follow such as Superfly (1972) starring Ron O’Neal, The Mack (1973) with Max Julien, and Black Caesar (1974), which featured Fred Williamson. As the films would become more popular, they were also met with increasing criticism for using hyper-masculine protagonist who engaged in excessive sex and violence with no consequence. Similar to Gerima’s criticism of Sweetback as giving the illusion of empowerment, social critics and activists argued that these movies offered a vicarious sense of conquering an oppressive system, but they were never able to escape their situation. It is said that as these criticisms increased, the movies, which came to be known as blaxploitation flicks, would decrease in popularity. In addition, many other movies of inferior quality would flood the genre and contribute to its demise by the mid-‘70s.
In 1975, Gerima would release Bush Mama, which was his thesis film to complete his Master’s of Fine Arts at UCLA. The film focuses on Dorothy, a widowed single mother dependent on welfare. As she becomes impregnated by her current boyfriend, T.C., she is pressured by her case worker to abort her child so that she can continue to receive benefits. At first glance, there are some commonalities that could be found between Bush Mama and Sweetback. Both films feature a character who transforms from a passive victim of his/her circumstances to someone in full control of their agency. They also take place in the Watts section of Los Angeles, and each employs non-conventional film techniques that reference Third Cinema, French New Wave, and Italian Neo-realism. The major difference between these films lies in the distinction between the individual and the collective. Sweetback’s initial awakening of consciousness comes from helping a local revolutionary activist escape from police custody after beating the cops unconsciousness, but he remains isolated throughout the film. Dorothy undergoes tremendous internal examination to become engaged in her own well-being, but her personal situation reflects the community at large, as they attempt to survive under aggressive systematic suppression from the police and the welfare state. As you watch the film, think of ways in which Dorothy’s transformation is visible. Also, pay attention to how some of Dorothy’s immediate contacts impact her transformation positively and negatively. In addition, think of what Gerima does differently in terms of editing and sound. Consider how Gerima cuts scenes in and out of the diegetic world, and what the relationship between the images symbolizes. Also, think of the different sources of sound within the film’s soundtrack. How do they reflect both the external and internal forces that pressure Dorothy?
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Week #4—The Birth of Blaxploitation and the Emerging Presence of Blacks in Hollywood
Similar to the beginnings of an early African-American cinema in the 1910s and 1920s, the emergence of an African cinema in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s grew out of a population’s desire to tell their own stories. Early African filmmakers who were able learn how to use cinematic technology, particularly from Francophone West Africa, looked to traditions of oral storytelling from their respective countries as a source for the kinds of projects they wanted to make. Filmmakers also were compelled to comment on the current transitions within many African countries, in which they were obtaining liberation from European colonial rule. Both of these sources inform the three kinds of film genres associated with African cinema. One genre is the semi-documentary film, in which colonialism is depicted in a way that focuses on how residents of colonized countries overcome colonial rule. Another genre is the didactic/fictional film, in which the colonial relationship between European and African countries is depicted in a Manichean manner, primarily good vs. evil, or, more directly, over-resourced European nations and under-resourced African nations. The African nations, or characters, are depicted as returning to their indigenous roots as a way to solve their problems. The research film is another genre out of African cinema that is more focused on identifying the root causes to problems throughout African countries, and developing solutions that can confront these adversities. Research films are more so determined by depicting changes that could have a tremendous impact on how African countries could be depicted.
Ousmane Sembene’s "Black Girl (La Noire de…)", released in 1966, would be classified as a didactic-fictional film because he directly confronts the topic of colonial relations between Senegal and France. Through the relationship between a Senegalese domestic, Diouana, and the French couple that hires her, Sembene points to the distinct contrast between the vicarious fascination that Western popular culture prompts, and the position in which African citizens are truly shown. This contrast is further illustrated through how France is depicted in the magazines shown in Diouana’s flashbacks to Senegal, and the glimpse out of the window in the apartment where she works. Instead of the urban environment she imagines, Diouana is surrounded by white walls and captured in tight spaces. Sembene also incorporates traditions of griot storytelling, in that he uses the film to reflect contemporary issues and situations that residents of Senegal face, which largely explains why his characters represent more or less social types so that he can make effective social commentaries on colonial relations and interactions within Senegalese society itself along the lines of class and religion.
African filmmakers joined with organizations such as FEPACI as far back as the late ‘60s so that they would be able to participate, and ultimately control, the infrastructure of film production, distribution, and exhibition within continental Africa. Many of these filmmakers could not get their films shown in their native countries because organizations from outside of the continent controlled the block-booking system, which determined what kinds of films would be shown in theaters. SECMA and COMACICO felt that works by African filmmakers would detract from the profits they earned from showing movies from Europe and the United States. Resources for distribution (CIDC), production (CIPROFILM), and exhibition (film festivals such as FESPACO in Burkina Faso and Festival Panafricain de la Culture in Algiers) would be gained over the next day, until adjustments had to be made to challenge government censorship and identify other sources of funding.
The control over resources for production, distribution, and exhibition, in addition to representation, continued to be a struggle for African-American filmmakers well into the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Melvin Van Peebles’s "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" (1971) was an effort to take initiative on all of those fronts, as he wrote, produced, scored, directed, and starred in the film with no studio funding or distribution. His film was designed to embody the rhetoric of the Black Power and Black Arts movements, in which the artistic production and sociopolitical activity reflected a movement towards self-determination and self-identity without the concerns of dominant White American society. The film addressed the notion of domestic colonialism, largely reflected through Sweetback’s role as a sex laborer who runs for his life after he beats two detectives unconsciously to save the life of a local revolutionary. Van Peebles also sought to disrupt the desexualized representations of Black men onscreen at that moment (i.e. Sidney Poitier), which explains the aggressive sexual content throughout. Some of the more sensationalist conventions from "Sweetback" would be appropriated by Hollywood studios that saw the money that Van Peebles’ film had made, and they wanted to replicate similar box office returns, given that mainstream movies at this time were losing money. It is important to think this week how about how an independently made film would give way to a new genre of studio-sponsored action films that starred Black characters, which would become know as blaxploitation.
Ousmane Sembene’s "Black Girl (La Noire de…)", released in 1966, would be classified as a didactic-fictional film because he directly confronts the topic of colonial relations between Senegal and France. Through the relationship between a Senegalese domestic, Diouana, and the French couple that hires her, Sembene points to the distinct contrast between the vicarious fascination that Western popular culture prompts, and the position in which African citizens are truly shown. This contrast is further illustrated through how France is depicted in the magazines shown in Diouana’s flashbacks to Senegal, and the glimpse out of the window in the apartment where she works. Instead of the urban environment she imagines, Diouana is surrounded by white walls and captured in tight spaces. Sembene also incorporates traditions of griot storytelling, in that he uses the film to reflect contemporary issues and situations that residents of Senegal face, which largely explains why his characters represent more or less social types so that he can make effective social commentaries on colonial relations and interactions within Senegalese society itself along the lines of class and religion.
African filmmakers joined with organizations such as FEPACI as far back as the late ‘60s so that they would be able to participate, and ultimately control, the infrastructure of film production, distribution, and exhibition within continental Africa. Many of these filmmakers could not get their films shown in their native countries because organizations from outside of the continent controlled the block-booking system, which determined what kinds of films would be shown in theaters. SECMA and COMACICO felt that works by African filmmakers would detract from the profits they earned from showing movies from Europe and the United States. Resources for distribution (CIDC), production (CIPROFILM), and exhibition (film festivals such as FESPACO in Burkina Faso and Festival Panafricain de la Culture in Algiers) would be gained over the next day, until adjustments had to be made to challenge government censorship and identify other sources of funding.
The control over resources for production, distribution, and exhibition, in addition to representation, continued to be a struggle for African-American filmmakers well into the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Melvin Van Peebles’s "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" (1971) was an effort to take initiative on all of those fronts, as he wrote, produced, scored, directed, and starred in the film with no studio funding or distribution. His film was designed to embody the rhetoric of the Black Power and Black Arts movements, in which the artistic production and sociopolitical activity reflected a movement towards self-determination and self-identity without the concerns of dominant White American society. The film addressed the notion of domestic colonialism, largely reflected through Sweetback’s role as a sex laborer who runs for his life after he beats two detectives unconsciously to save the life of a local revolutionary. Van Peebles also sought to disrupt the desexualized representations of Black men onscreen at that moment (i.e. Sidney Poitier), which explains the aggressive sexual content throughout. Some of the more sensationalist conventions from "Sweetback" would be appropriated by Hollywood studios that saw the money that Van Peebles’ film had made, and they wanted to replicate similar box office returns, given that mainstream movies at this time were losing money. It is important to think this week how about how an independently made film would give way to a new genre of studio-sponsored action films that starred Black characters, which would become know as blaxploitation.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Week #3—Films from Continental Africa
Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates is a dynamic film to begin our semester because it immediately brings to mind four topics. First, Micheaux tackles the subject of lynching with tremendous urgency, given that he released the film months after the Red Summer of 1919, in which there were a string of lynching that took place in more than twenty cities. Secondly, Micheaux was one of few, if any, directors who examined interracial romantic unions in the 20th century. The scene in which we learn that Sylvia Landry’s assailant is her biological father addresses disputes the myths of biracial women as sexually assertive and manipulative, and the justification that lynching was used to protect innocent White women from sexually uncontrollable Black men. Formally, Micheaux achieves this through the use of crosscutting, as shown when he cuts between Sylvia trying to aggressively escape Armand Gridlestone and the burning of the Landry family after they are lynched. The series of events takes place during a flashback that does not appear until the film’s third act. Although his central character is a woman, Micheaux also provides a cinematic image of the “Race Man,” a Black man who reflects model social and cultural values that reflect upward class mobility and the desire to establish a Black middle-class that disrupts the caricatures circulated of African Americans as inherently incompetent and willfully compliant to their suppression, or eternal victims of exploitative labor practices (i.e. sharecropping/tenant farming). Micheaux himself presents two characters, Eph and Old Ned, who would most likely be identified as caricatures, yet they are used to reveal the consequences of racial betrayal, physically and internally.
One of the most striking observations in Gates is the transfer between spaces, identified as North (urban) and South (rural). The correspondence between these locations point to two major moments in the early 20th century for African Americans: the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. As early as 1915, African Americans migrated from the South to escape both racial terror and labor exploitation in search of new economic and social opportunities in Northeastern and Midwestern Cities. One specific location, Harlem (a section of Manhattan in New York City), would embody a variety of new arrivals of African descent within and outside the United States. Whether through artistic expression or economic autonomy, African Americans sought to project a set of values and demeanor that directly contradicted the image circulated after slavery through song, stage, film, and even consumer items.
Critics and scholars attribute Within Our Gates to be an example of a film created during the first decade of filmmaking activity amongst African Americans (1910-1919). In continental Africa, African filmmakers did not emerge until the 1960s, as the countries from which they hailed were gaining independence from European colonial rule. One of the most profound filmmakers to emerge would be Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, a novelist who used his film training from Russia to adapt his books into films. Sembene is more so credited for transferring the storytelling traditions of the griot to cinema, both in the structure of the narrative and its outcome. In Black Girl (La Noire de…), Sembene uses the conventions of the griot to examine the placement of a Senegalese domestic in the home of a French family. He reveals that the ideas that his central character, Diouana, had about working as an au pair in France, are quickly shattered. It is important to examine how her situation is a commentary on the colonial relationship between Senegal and France, and what the promises this relationship has to offer reveals about its realities.
Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966)
Dir. Ousmane Sembene
Questions to consider while watching Black Girl:
1. What role does the mask play in the film? How is it reflective of the relationship between Diouana and the family that has hired her?
2. How are flashbacks used by Sembene throughout the film? What correspondence do they have with Diouana’s internal dialogue?
3. Sembene includes scenes in the film between Diouana and her boyfriend in Senegal. What kind of Senegalese citizen does he represent, and what are some contrasts between him and Diouana?
4. What are some examples of silent resistance that Diouana practices while working as a domestic?
Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates is a dynamic film to begin our semester because it immediately brings to mind four topics. First, Micheaux tackles the subject of lynching with tremendous urgency, given that he released the film months after the Red Summer of 1919, in which there were a string of lynching that took place in more than twenty cities. Secondly, Micheaux was one of few, if any, directors who examined interracial romantic unions in the 20th century. The scene in which we learn that Sylvia Landry’s assailant is her biological father addresses disputes the myths of biracial women as sexually assertive and manipulative, and the justification that lynching was used to protect innocent White women from sexually uncontrollable Black men. Formally, Micheaux achieves this through the use of crosscutting, as shown when he cuts between Sylvia trying to aggressively escape Armand Gridlestone and the burning of the Landry family after they are lynched. The series of events takes place during a flashback that does not appear until the film’s third act. Although his central character is a woman, Micheaux also provides a cinematic image of the “Race Man,” a Black man who reflects model social and cultural values that reflect upward class mobility and the desire to establish a Black middle-class that disrupts the caricatures circulated of African Americans as inherently incompetent and willfully compliant to their suppression, or eternal victims of exploitative labor practices (i.e. sharecropping/tenant farming). Micheaux himself presents two characters, Eph and Old Ned, who would most likely be identified as caricatures, yet they are used to reveal the consequences of racial betrayal, physically and internally.
One of the most striking observations in Gates is the transfer between spaces, identified as North (urban) and South (rural). The correspondence between these locations point to two major moments in the early 20th century for African Americans: the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. As early as 1915, African Americans migrated from the South to escape both racial terror and labor exploitation in search of new economic and social opportunities in Northeastern and Midwestern Cities. One specific location, Harlem (a section of Manhattan in New York City), would embody a variety of new arrivals of African descent within and outside the United States. Whether through artistic expression or economic autonomy, African Americans sought to project a set of values and demeanor that directly contradicted the image circulated after slavery through song, stage, film, and even consumer items.
Critics and scholars attribute Within Our Gates to be an example of a film created during the first decade of filmmaking activity amongst African Americans (1910-1919). In continental Africa, African filmmakers did not emerge until the 1960s, as the countries from which they hailed were gaining independence from European colonial rule. One of the most profound filmmakers to emerge would be Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, a novelist who used his film training from Russia to adapt his books into films. Sembene is more so credited for transferring the storytelling traditions of the griot to cinema, both in the structure of the narrative and its outcome. In Black Girl (La Noire de…), Sembene uses the conventions of the griot to examine the placement of a Senegalese domestic in the home of a French family. He reveals that the ideas that his central character, Diouana, had about working as an au pair in France, are quickly shattered. It is important to examine how her situation is a commentary on the colonial relationship between Senegal and France, and what the promises this relationship has to offer reveals about its realities.
Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966)
Dir. Ousmane Sembene
Questions to consider while watching Black Girl:
1. What role does the mask play in the film? How is it reflective of the relationship between Diouana and the family that has hired her?
2. How are flashbacks used by Sembene throughout the film? What correspondence do they have with Diouana’s internal dialogue?
3. Sembene includes scenes in the film between Diouana and her boyfriend in Senegal. What kind of Senegalese citizen does he represent, and what are some contrasts between him and Diouana?
4. What are some examples of silent resistance that Diouana practices while working as a domestic?
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Week #2--Early Filmmakers
Last week, we spent some time watching documentaries about the representation of African Americans in popular culture, most notably in cinema. Riggs’s Ethnic Notions and Daniels’s Classified X each reveal a variety of caricatures by which many Black screen actors had to conform for nearly a century. Caricatures such as the mammy, Uncle Tom the coon, the buck, and the sambo have been re-evaluated by film scholars and cultural critics either to reinforce the condemnation of these types or to identify possibilities for subversion.
An analysis of representation inevitably transfers to a discussion about control over images, most notably about who controls them and the motives for such portrayals. In Classified X, Melvin Van Peebles explained how his increasing displeasure with the presentation of African Americans onscreen motivated him to make films that aggressively countered these practices. While his first two films directly addressed race relations (The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967), Watermelon Man (1970)), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) focused on a sex laborer who, while running from the police for helping a Black revolutionary escape police custody, desperate seeks an escape from both mental and physical captivity. While Van Peebles sought to make a film that was consistent with the sentiments of the Black Power movement through form and content, he also received criticism for reproducing stereotypes, notably his presentation of a sexually aggressive Black man who uses violence to escape adverse situations.
Interestingly enough, Van Peebles’s The Story of a Three Day Pass was adapted from a novel he wrote entitled La Permission. His entry into film resembles that of Oscar Micheaux, whose first film, The Homesteader (1919), was initially a novel. Micheaux saw film not only as a promising business venture, but also a more dynamic way to tell stories, many which were semi-autobiographical. Embedded within his films was a desire to depict an upwardly mobile Black middle class who aspired to be recognized as U.S. citizens. Micheaux referenced figures such as Booker T. Washington through his male protagonists, as he focused on issues such as education and literacy, racial stratification and labor, and racial terror in the form of lynching. He may have been critical of institutions such as the Black church, in which Micheaux criticized ministers for deceiving their patrons, but he was as much the subject of criticism. Not only was Micheaux frequently censored for his desire to address topics that even Black audiences found to be controversial, but later Black filmmakers and critics felt that he reinforced the color-caste system that depicted light-skinned Blacks as heroes and dark-skinned Blacks as villains.
As you watch Within Our Gates (1919), focus on what the central issues of the narrative are. It is important to note that this film was released during the period of the Great Migration, the end of World War I, the Red Summer of 1919, and the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of the “New Negro.” Also, pay close attention to the central characters. How are they photographed, and what kind of space are they placed in to emphasize the way they are characterized? To continue with space, think of how Micheaux depicts the North and the South in terms of geography and the characters who are placed within these regions. What are some characteristics about the film’s production quality that show it to be deficient? At the same time, what does the limited production quality offer that is absent in mainstream films that depict Black characters?
An analysis of representation inevitably transfers to a discussion about control over images, most notably about who controls them and the motives for such portrayals. In Classified X, Melvin Van Peebles explained how his increasing displeasure with the presentation of African Americans onscreen motivated him to make films that aggressively countered these practices. While his first two films directly addressed race relations (The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967), Watermelon Man (1970)), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) focused on a sex laborer who, while running from the police for helping a Black revolutionary escape police custody, desperate seeks an escape from both mental and physical captivity. While Van Peebles sought to make a film that was consistent with the sentiments of the Black Power movement through form and content, he also received criticism for reproducing stereotypes, notably his presentation of a sexually aggressive Black man who uses violence to escape adverse situations.
Interestingly enough, Van Peebles’s The Story of a Three Day Pass was adapted from a novel he wrote entitled La Permission. His entry into film resembles that of Oscar Micheaux, whose first film, The Homesteader (1919), was initially a novel. Micheaux saw film not only as a promising business venture, but also a more dynamic way to tell stories, many which were semi-autobiographical. Embedded within his films was a desire to depict an upwardly mobile Black middle class who aspired to be recognized as U.S. citizens. Micheaux referenced figures such as Booker T. Washington through his male protagonists, as he focused on issues such as education and literacy, racial stratification and labor, and racial terror in the form of lynching. He may have been critical of institutions such as the Black church, in which Micheaux criticized ministers for deceiving their patrons, but he was as much the subject of criticism. Not only was Micheaux frequently censored for his desire to address topics that even Black audiences found to be controversial, but later Black filmmakers and critics felt that he reinforced the color-caste system that depicted light-skinned Blacks as heroes and dark-skinned Blacks as villains.
As you watch Within Our Gates (1919), focus on what the central issues of the narrative are. It is important to note that this film was released during the period of the Great Migration, the end of World War I, the Red Summer of 1919, and the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of the “New Negro.” Also, pay close attention to the central characters. How are they photographed, and what kind of space are they placed in to emphasize the way they are characterized? To continue with space, think of how Micheaux depicts the North and the South in terms of geography and the characters who are placed within these regions. What are some characteristics about the film’s production quality that show it to be deficient? At the same time, what does the limited production quality offer that is absent in mainstream films that depict Black characters?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
WEEK #1—1/26—The Context of Radical Black Film—Confronting Stereotypical Representations and The Development of Cinematic Strategies
When the topic of African American cinema is discussed, it is often within the context of images and representation. Throughout the semester, we will spend a lot of time talking about formal components of films by Black directors and how social and historical contexts inform content. For the first week of class, however, time will be spent watching two documentaries that focus on the circulation of African-American images throughout popular culture. While we discuss the kinds of images that are presented, we will also discuss the motives behind the design of these images and how they manage to persist in spite of societal and technological advances.
The late Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) was primarily known for his documentaries that candidly examined issues that concerned the African-American LGBT community (we will be watching another of his films, "Tongues Untied," later in the semester). He is also widely celebrated for his work that looks closely at African-American images in contemporary popular media. His documentary "Color Adjustment" (1991) looks at the presentation of African Americans in television in terms of how the content of Black-themed shows relate to the interests of networks and audience expectations. Prior to "Color Adjustment," Riggs made "Ethnic Notions" (1989), a more expansive analysis of stock caricatures associated with African Americans. He goes as far back as before the Civil War to learn how images such as the mammy, the coon, the sambo, and Uncle Tom were used to justify slavery and subsequent suppression of African Americans. More importantly, Riggs chronicles how these images figure into sheet music, stage productions, and motion pictures after the Civil War and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments in the Constitution.
Mark Daniels’ "Classified X" (1998), which features filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, furthers the examination of African American images, yet concentrates solely on how stock caricatures develop throughout American cinema in the 20th century. Through his personal history as both a spectator and a filmmaker, Van Peebles begins from when he became conscious of the inconsistency between the images he saw of African Americans onscreen and the people that surrounded him in his neighborhood on the South side of Chicago. He follows with trends that developed in mainstream American cinema concerning the portrayal of Blacks onscreen, up to the point where he released his independently produced film "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song," released in 1971 (which we will watch later in the semester). While Van Peebles’s objective was to transfer the rhetoric and energy of Black radical activism of the 1960s to a non-conventional form of filmmaking, the appropriation of excessive sex and violence and the reduction of a political subtext by Hollywood studios is what gave way to the blaxploitation genre.
As you watch both films, focus on the stock caricatures that are discussed, the context in which these images are produced, and how they persist through various forms of media, particularly film. What are some commonalities shared between these documentaries in terms of their objectives and what they identify, and what are some differences between the two along those same lines. Most importantly, how would you say that "Ethnic Notions" and "Classified X" are in conversation with one another, and how does the information these films provide relate to your personal observations of either Black images in mainstream cinema, or Black-themed films in both mainstream and independent cinema?
The late Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) was primarily known for his documentaries that candidly examined issues that concerned the African-American LGBT community (we will be watching another of his films, "Tongues Untied," later in the semester). He is also widely celebrated for his work that looks closely at African-American images in contemporary popular media. His documentary "Color Adjustment" (1991) looks at the presentation of African Americans in television in terms of how the content of Black-themed shows relate to the interests of networks and audience expectations. Prior to "Color Adjustment," Riggs made "Ethnic Notions" (1989), a more expansive analysis of stock caricatures associated with African Americans. He goes as far back as before the Civil War to learn how images such as the mammy, the coon, the sambo, and Uncle Tom were used to justify slavery and subsequent suppression of African Americans. More importantly, Riggs chronicles how these images figure into sheet music, stage productions, and motion pictures after the Civil War and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments in the Constitution.
Mark Daniels’ "Classified X" (1998), which features filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, furthers the examination of African American images, yet concentrates solely on how stock caricatures develop throughout American cinema in the 20th century. Through his personal history as both a spectator and a filmmaker, Van Peebles begins from when he became conscious of the inconsistency between the images he saw of African Americans onscreen and the people that surrounded him in his neighborhood on the South side of Chicago. He follows with trends that developed in mainstream American cinema concerning the portrayal of Blacks onscreen, up to the point where he released his independently produced film "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song," released in 1971 (which we will watch later in the semester). While Van Peebles’s objective was to transfer the rhetoric and energy of Black radical activism of the 1960s to a non-conventional form of filmmaking, the appropriation of excessive sex and violence and the reduction of a political subtext by Hollywood studios is what gave way to the blaxploitation genre.
As you watch both films, focus on the stock caricatures that are discussed, the context in which these images are produced, and how they persist through various forms of media, particularly film. What are some commonalities shared between these documentaries in terms of their objectives and what they identify, and what are some differences between the two along those same lines. Most importantly, how would you say that "Ethnic Notions" and "Classified X" are in conversation with one another, and how does the information these films provide relate to your personal observations of either Black images in mainstream cinema, or Black-themed films in both mainstream and independent cinema?
Syllabus for Radical Black Film--Spring 2010
SCHEDULE FOR RADICAL BLACK FILM (Spring 2010)
WEEK #1—1/26—The Context of Radical Black Film—Confronting Stereotypical
Representations and The Development of Cinematic Strategies
Screening: Ethnic Notions (dir. Marlon Riggs, 1986, 55 min.)/Classified X (dir. Mark Daniels, 1998, 56 min.)
Readings: Bogle—“Black Beginnings: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Birth of a Nation”/Cripps—“Black Film as Genre: Definitions”/Diawara—“Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance/Snead—"Images of Blacks in Black Independent Films: A Brief
Survey”
WEEK #2—2/2—Early Filmmakers
Screening: Within Our Gates (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1919, 87 min.)/Clips from Murder in Harlem (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1935, 102 min.)
Readings: Bowser and Spence—“Within Whose Gates?: The Symbolic and Political Complexity of Racial Discourses”/Green—“Micheaux’s Class Position”/Locke—“The New Negro”
WEEK #3—2/9—Films from Continental Africa
Screening: Xala (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1975, 120 min.)/Clips from Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966, 59 min.)
Readings: Boughedir—“A Cinema Fighting for Its Liberation”/Diawara—"The Artist as the Leader of the Revolution: The History of the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes"/ Pfaff—“Sembene, A Griot of Modern Times”
WEEK #4—2/16—The Birth of Blaxploitation and the Emerging Presence of Blacks in Hollywood
Screening: clips from Sweet Sweetback's Baaadassss Song (dir. Melvin
Van Peebles, 1971, 90 min.)/ Baaadassss Cinema (dir. Isaac Julien, 2004, 58 min.)
Readings: Massood—"Cotton in the City: The Black Ghetto, Blaxploitation, and Beyond"/ James—“Melvin Van Peebles: ‘Original Guerilla’”/Yearwood—"Colloquy on Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song and the Development of the Contemporary Black Film Movement"
WEEK #5—2/23—Challenging Revamped Stereotypes of Blacks in Hollywood
Screening: Bush Mama (dir. Haile Gerima, 1975, 98 min.)/Clips from Killer of Sheep (dir. Charles Burnett, 1977, 81 min.)
Readings: Masilela—"The Los Angeles School of Black
Filmmakers" /Murashige—“Haile Gerima and the Political Economy of Cinematic Resistance/Young—“Shot in Watts”
WEEK #6—3/2—Films of the Caribbean
Screening: Sugar Cane Alley (dir. Euzhan Palcy, 1983, 107 min.)
Readings: Warner—"Film, Literature, and Identity in the Caribbean”/Givanni—“Interview with Euzhan Palcy”/Hall—“Cinematic Identity and Cultural Representation
WEEK #7—3/9— Black British Cinema
Screening: The Passion of Remembrance (dirs. Maureen Blackwood, Isaac Julien, 1986, 80 min.)
Readings: Auguiste/Black Audio Film Collective—“Black Independents and Third Cinema: The British Context”/Fusco—“A Black Avant-Garde?: Notes on Black Audio Film Collective and Sankofa”/Mercer—“Diaspora Culture and the Dialogic Imagination”/Pines—“The Cultural Context of Black British Cinema”
WEEK #8—3/16— Women Filmmakers
Screening: Daughters of the Dust (dir. Julie Dash, 1991, 110 min.)
Readings: Bambara—“Preface”/Dash—"Making Daughters of the Dust”/Dash and hooks—“Dialogue”/Tate—“A Word”
WEEK #9—3/23—Spring Break
WEEK #10—3/30— Mid-term presentations/Mid-term paper due
WEEK #11—4/6—Confronting and Re-Writing History
Screening: The Watermelon Woman (dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1996, 83 min.)
Readings: Cripps—“New Black Cinema and Uses of the Past”/Foote—"Hoax of the Lost Ancestor: Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman"/Haslett and Abiaka—"Interview with Cheryl Dunye”
WEEK #12—4/13—Blackness and Sexuality
Screening: Looking for Langston (dir. Isaac Julien, 1986, 45min.)/ Tongues Untied (dir. Marlon Riggs, 1990, 55 min.)
Readings: Gates—“Looking for Modernism”/Julien—"'Black Is, Black Ain't': Notes on De-Essentializing Black Identities"/Riggs—"Unleash the Queen"/van Leer—“Visible Silence: Spectatorship in Black Gay and Lesbian Film”
WEEK #13—4/20—Renaissance of Contemporary African-American Cinema
Screening: Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989, 109 min.)
Readings: Massood—“Welcome to Crooklyn: Spike Lee and the Rearticulation of the Black Urbanscape”/Watkins—“Black Youth and the Ironies of Capitalism”
WEEK #14—4/27—New Media, Representation and the Neglect of History
Screenings: Bamboozled (dir. Spike Lee, 2000, 136 min.)
Readings: Crowdus and Georgakas—"Thinking About the Power of Images: An Interview with Spike Lee/Davis—"'Beautiful Ugly' Blackface: An Aesthetic Appreciation of Bamboozled"/Landau—"Spike Lee's Revolutionary Broadside"/Lucia—"Race, Media, and Money: A Critical Symposium on Spike Lee's Bamboozled/Rogin—"Nowhere Left to Stand: The Burnt Cork Roots of Popular Culture"/Tate—"Bamboozled: White Supremacy and a Black Way of Being Human/White—"Post-Art Minstrelsy"/Massood—“Epilogue: New Millenium Minstrel Shows? African-American Cinema in the Late 1990s”
WEEK #15—5/3—Post-Millenial Expressions of African-American Cinematic Identity
Screenings: Medicine for Melancholy (dir. Barry Jenkins, 2009, 87 min.)
Readings: Lim—“Examining Race and a Future Beyond It” (New York Times)/Lott--“A No-Theory Theory of Contemporary Black Cinema”/O’Hehir—“Young, Black, Sexy, and Sad in San Francisco” (Salon)/Taylor—“We Don’t Need Another Hero: Anti-Theses on Aesthetics”/Tully—“A Conversation with Barry Jenkins”/Yearwood—“Towards a Theory of a Black Cinema Aesthetic”
WEEK #16—5/10—Final Discussion/Final Paper presentations
WEEK #17—5/17 (EXAM WEEK)—FINAL PAPER DUE by 4:00pm
WEEK #1—1/26—The Context of Radical Black Film—Confronting Stereotypical
Representations and The Development of Cinematic Strategies
Screening: Ethnic Notions (dir. Marlon Riggs, 1986, 55 min.)/Classified X (dir. Mark Daniels, 1998, 56 min.)
Readings: Bogle—“Black Beginnings: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to The Birth of a Nation”/Cripps—“Black Film as Genre: Definitions”/Diawara—“Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance/Snead—"Images of Blacks in Black Independent Films: A Brief
Survey”
WEEK #2—2/2—Early Filmmakers
Screening: Within Our Gates (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1919, 87 min.)/Clips from Murder in Harlem (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1935, 102 min.)
Readings: Bowser and Spence—“Within Whose Gates?: The Symbolic and Political Complexity of Racial Discourses”/Green—“Micheaux’s Class Position”/Locke—“The New Negro”
WEEK #3—2/9—Films from Continental Africa
Screening: Xala (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1975, 120 min.)/Clips from Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966, 59 min.)
Readings: Boughedir—“A Cinema Fighting for Its Liberation”/Diawara—"The Artist as the Leader of the Revolution: The History of the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes"/ Pfaff—“Sembene, A Griot of Modern Times”
WEEK #4—2/16—The Birth of Blaxploitation and the Emerging Presence of Blacks in Hollywood
Screening: clips from Sweet Sweetback's Baaadassss Song (dir. Melvin
Van Peebles, 1971, 90 min.)/ Baaadassss Cinema (dir. Isaac Julien, 2004, 58 min.)
Readings: Massood—"Cotton in the City: The Black Ghetto, Blaxploitation, and Beyond"/ James—“Melvin Van Peebles: ‘Original Guerilla’”/Yearwood—"Colloquy on Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song and the Development of the Contemporary Black Film Movement"
WEEK #5—2/23—Challenging Revamped Stereotypes of Blacks in Hollywood
Screening: Bush Mama (dir. Haile Gerima, 1975, 98 min.)/Clips from Killer of Sheep (dir. Charles Burnett, 1977, 81 min.)
Readings: Masilela—"The Los Angeles School of Black
Filmmakers" /Murashige—“Haile Gerima and the Political Economy of Cinematic Resistance/Young—“Shot in Watts”
WEEK #6—3/2—Films of the Caribbean
Screening: Sugar Cane Alley (dir. Euzhan Palcy, 1983, 107 min.)
Readings: Warner—"Film, Literature, and Identity in the Caribbean”/Givanni—“Interview with Euzhan Palcy”/Hall—“Cinematic Identity and Cultural Representation
WEEK #7—3/9— Black British Cinema
Screening: The Passion of Remembrance (dirs. Maureen Blackwood, Isaac Julien, 1986, 80 min.)
Readings: Auguiste/Black Audio Film Collective—“Black Independents and Third Cinema: The British Context”/Fusco—“A Black Avant-Garde?: Notes on Black Audio Film Collective and Sankofa”/Mercer—“Diaspora Culture and the Dialogic Imagination”/Pines—“The Cultural Context of Black British Cinema”
WEEK #8—3/16— Women Filmmakers
Screening: Daughters of the Dust (dir. Julie Dash, 1991, 110 min.)
Readings: Bambara—“Preface”/Dash—"Making Daughters of the Dust”/Dash and hooks—“Dialogue”/Tate—“A Word”
WEEK #9—3/23—Spring Break
WEEK #10—3/30— Mid-term presentations/Mid-term paper due
WEEK #11—4/6—Confronting and Re-Writing History
Screening: The Watermelon Woman (dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1996, 83 min.)
Readings: Cripps—“New Black Cinema and Uses of the Past”/Foote—"Hoax of the Lost Ancestor: Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman"/Haslett and Abiaka—"Interview with Cheryl Dunye”
WEEK #12—4/13—Blackness and Sexuality
Screening: Looking for Langston (dir. Isaac Julien, 1986, 45min.)/ Tongues Untied (dir. Marlon Riggs, 1990, 55 min.)
Readings: Gates—“Looking for Modernism”/Julien—"'Black Is, Black Ain't': Notes on De-Essentializing Black Identities"/Riggs—"Unleash the Queen"/van Leer—“Visible Silence: Spectatorship in Black Gay and Lesbian Film”
WEEK #13—4/20—Renaissance of Contemporary African-American Cinema
Screening: Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989, 109 min.)
Readings: Massood—“Welcome to Crooklyn: Spike Lee and the Rearticulation of the Black Urbanscape”/Watkins—“Black Youth and the Ironies of Capitalism”
WEEK #14—4/27—New Media, Representation and the Neglect of History
Screenings: Bamboozled (dir. Spike Lee, 2000, 136 min.)
Readings: Crowdus and Georgakas—"Thinking About the Power of Images: An Interview with Spike Lee/Davis—"'Beautiful Ugly' Blackface: An Aesthetic Appreciation of Bamboozled"/Landau—"Spike Lee's Revolutionary Broadside"/Lucia—"Race, Media, and Money: A Critical Symposium on Spike Lee's Bamboozled/Rogin—"Nowhere Left to Stand: The Burnt Cork Roots of Popular Culture"/Tate—"Bamboozled: White Supremacy and a Black Way of Being Human/White—"Post-Art Minstrelsy"/Massood—“Epilogue: New Millenium Minstrel Shows? African-American Cinema in the Late 1990s”
WEEK #15—5/3—Post-Millenial Expressions of African-American Cinematic Identity
Screenings: Medicine for Melancholy (dir. Barry Jenkins, 2009, 87 min.)
Readings: Lim—“Examining Race and a Future Beyond It” (New York Times)/Lott--“A No-Theory Theory of Contemporary Black Cinema”/O’Hehir—“Young, Black, Sexy, and Sad in San Francisco” (Salon)/Taylor—“We Don’t Need Another Hero: Anti-Theses on Aesthetics”/Tully—“A Conversation with Barry Jenkins”/Yearwood—“Towards a Theory of a Black Cinema Aesthetic”
WEEK #16—5/10—Final Discussion/Final Paper presentations
WEEK #17—5/17 (EXAM WEEK)—FINAL PAPER DUE by 4:00pm
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