Redefining Black Film

Redefining Black Film
Author: Mark A. Reid
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 182
Release: 1993-02-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0520079027

This assessment of black film history distinguishes between American films that are controlled by Blacks and those which utilize black talent, but are controlled by Whites. The study ranges from the earliest black involvement in Hollywood to present feminist influences in black productions.

Redefining Black Film

Redefining Black Film
Author: Mark A. Reid
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 1993-02-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780520912847

Can films about black characters, produced by white filmmakers, be considered "black films"? In answering this question, Mark Reid reassesses black film history, carefully distinguishing between films controlled by blacks and films that utilize black talent, but are controlled by whites. Previous black film criticism has "buried" the true black film industry, Reid says, by concentrating on films that are about, but not by, blacks. Reid's discussion of black independent films—defined as films that focus on the black community and that are written, directed, produced, and distributed by blacks—ranges from the earliest black involvement at the turn of the century up through the civil rights movement of the Sixties and the recent resurgence of feminism in black cultural production. His critical assessment of work by some black filmmakers such as Spike Lee notes how these films avoid dramatizations of sexism, homophobia, and classism within the black community. In the area of black commercial film controlled by whites, Reid considers three genres: African-American comedy, black family film, and black action film. He points out that even when these films use black writers and directors, a black perspective rarely surfaces. Reid's innovative critical approach, which transcends the "black-image" language of earlier studies—and at the same time redefines black film—makes an important contribution to film history. Certain to attract film scholars, this work will also appeal to anyone interested in African-American and Women's Studies.

Black Lenses, Black Voices

Black Lenses, Black Voices
Author: Mark A. Reid
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2005
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780742526426

Black Lenses, Black Voices is a provocative look at films directed and written_and sometimes produced_by African Americans, as well as black-oriented films whose directors or screenwriters are not black. Mark Reid shows how certain films dramatize the contemporary African American community as a politically and economically diverse group, vastly different from film representations of the 1960s. Taking us through the development of African American independent filmmaking before and after World War II, he then illustrates the unique nature of African American family, action, horror, female-centered, and independent films, such as Eve's Bayou, Jungle Fever, Shaft, Souls of Sin, Bones, Waiting to Exhale, Monster's Ball, Sankofa, and many more.

African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness

African American Cinema Through Black Lives Consciousness
Author: Mark A. Reid
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2019-01-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814345506

The interdisciplinary quality of the anthology makes it approachable to students and scholars of fields ranging from film to culture to African American studies alike.

Redefining Normal

Redefining Normal
Author: Alexis Black
Publisher:
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2019-11-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781734573145

Growing up, they didn't believe they had a future. Together, they are building forever. Alexis Black persevered through her mother's death and her father's imprisonment. And after escaping a long and abusive relationship, the college junior promised her foster parents not to date for at least a year. But when she meets an incoming freshman on the first day of their scholarship program, she feels the world melt away, as though it were only the two of them in the room. Justin Black lived in the poorest section of Detroit before his parents surrendered him to the foster care system at the age of nine. But when he grabs the chance for better opportunities by pursuing higher education, he can't help but be drawn to a beautiful third-year student. At first, their past traumas--and their age difference--conspired to complicate their attraction. But the joy each took in the other and eventually conquered those obstacles, and these two survivors journeyed together toward healing. In a stark and wholehearted true story that shares how two individuals on separate paths found each other, Alexis and Justin merge their course into one full of hope and purpose. And hand-in-hand, with a desire to help others, they learned to reject the abusive patterns of their past, thereby intentionally breaking the cycle of generational violence and unhealthy behaviors. Written in an engaging novelistic style, the authors put forward a thoughtful exchange of ideas and personal experiences illustrating how anybody, no matter their backgrounds, can have a life of self-empowerment and joy. Broken down into four sections that cover crucial topics such as "Worthiness" and "Mental Health," this compelling narrative will help any who are learning to love themselves and want to end the line of toxic relationships. Redefining Normal: How Two Foster Kids Beat The Odds and Discovered Healing, Happiness, and Love is a page-turning memoir that will open your eyes to possibilities and dreams. If you like honest tales of triumph, refreshing transparency, and resilient faith in God, then you'll adore Justin and Alexis' inspirational story. This story contains mentions of domestic violence, trauma, sexual assault, and other difficult issues faced on the road to healing. Buy Redefining Normal to claim victory over harmful pasts today!

Film Blackness

Film Blackness
Author: Michael Boyce Gillespie
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2016-08-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0822373882

In Film Blackness Michael Boyce Gillespie shifts the ways we think about black film, treating it not as a category, a genre, or strictly a representation of the black experience but as a visual negotiation between film as art and the discursivity of race. Gillespie challenges expectations that black film can or should represent the reality of black life or provide answers to social problems. Instead, he frames black film alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media, treating it as an interdisciplinary form that enacts black visual and expressive culture. Gillespie discusses the racial grotesque in Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin (1975), black performativity in Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street (1989), blackness and noir in Bill Duke's Deep Cover (1992), and how place and desire impact blackness in Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy (2008). Considering how each film represents a distinct conception of the relationship between race and cinema, Gillespie recasts the idea of black film and poses new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, historiography, and intertextuality.

Black City Cinema

Black City Cinema
Author: Paula Massood
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2011-01-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1439905657

In Black City Cinema, Paula Massood shows how popular films reflected the massive social changes that resulted from the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North, West, and Mid-West during the first three decades of the twentieth century. By the onset of the Depression, the Black population had become primarily urban, transforming individual lives as well as urban experience and culture.Massood probes into the relationship of place and time, showing how urban settings became an intrinsic element of African American film as Black people became more firmly rooted in urban spaces and more visible as historical and political subjects. Illuminating the intersections of film, history, politics, and urban discourse, she considers the chief genres of African American and Hollywood narrative film: the black cast musicals of the 1920s and the "race" films of the early sound era to blaxploitation and hood films, as well as the work of Spike Lee toward the end of the century. As it examines such a wide range of films over much of the twentieth century, this book offers a unique map of Black representations in film.

Colorization

Colorization
Author: Wil Haygood
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2021-10-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 052565688X

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE • ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.” —Shondaland This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and Showdown. Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation—which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster—Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes. He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves—including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others. An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.

Black Woman Redefined

Black Woman Redefined
Author: Sophia Nelson
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2012-11-20
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 193666173X

It's time for a REDEFINITION among black women in America. In its 2011 hardcover release, Black Woman Redefined was a top-selling book and took home a 2011 Best Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award from the African American Literary Awards. Author Sophia A. Nelson won the 2012 Champions of Diversity Award, given each year by diversity business executives in Fortune 100 companies. Black Woman Redefined was inspired in part by what Nelson calls “open season on accomplished black women": from Don Imus's name-calling of black female basketball players in 2007 and a 2009 Yale University study titled “Marriage Eludes High-Achieving Black Women," to the more recent revelation that First Lady Michelle Obama is concerned about being painted as an “angry, black woman." In Black Woman Redefined, Nelson sets out to change this cultural perception, taking readers on a no-holds-barred journey into the hearts and minds of accomplished black women to reveal truths, tribulations, and insights like never before. This groundbreaking book provides black women of a new generation with essential career and life-coaching advice. Based on never-before-done research on college-educated, career-driven black women, Nelson offers her fellow “sisters"—and those who know, love, and work with them—a feel-good volume for personal and professional success that empowers them without tearing others down.

Redefining Diva

Redefining Diva
Author: Sheryl Lee Ralph
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1451608810

Secrets about love, life, and Hollywood from the Tony Award-winning actress from the Broadway production of Dreamgirls —in the role recently made famous by Beyonce—timed to coincide with the thirtieth anniversary of the original Broadway show. Sheryl Lee Ralph was the original Deena Jones in Broadway’s production of Dreamgirls and the show was a Broadway sensation from its inception. Now, the star of film, television, and Broadway, known for her talent and fearlessness, shows readers how to find—and own—their inner divas. Sheryl rose to international fame after her performance in Dreamgirls, winning the Tony Award for Best Actress and going on to star in movies with Denzel Washington and Robert DeNiro and capture America’s heart as television’s favorite mom Die in the #1-rated series Moesha . But it wasn’t an easy task. From her legendary catfight with Diana Ross to her controversial exit from Moesha, Sheryl Lee Ralph is a woman who does not fade in the background—and she reveals how and why she has remained in the spotlight for decades. Sheryl is a hip, modern Miss Manners who inspires women with her wit, strength, and call-it-like-it-is courage. Using her own experiences as a guide—and dishing the truth behind all the rumors—Sheryl reveals her rules for living. This is Divahood A-Z—from the practical to the spiritual, featuring advice on everything from relationships to fashion to success in the business world. So, the next time someone calls you a diva, you’ll just smile and say “Thank you!”