“Black Film As Genre”
ALEXANDER, FRANCIS W. "Stereotyping as a Method of Exploitation in Films." Black Scholar VII (May 1976) : 26-29. An example of black interest in film criticism.
ARMAS, JOSE. "Antonio and the Mayor: A Cultural Review of the Film." Journal of Ethnic Studies III (Fall 1975) : 98-101. One of the many essays on other ethnic groups' dissatisfaction with depictions in popular film.
ASENDIO, JAMES. "History of Negro Motion Pictures." International Photographer 11 (January 1940): 16-17.
BENNETT, LERONE, JR. "The Emancipation Orgasm : Sweetback in Wonderland." Ebony XXXVI (September 1971): 106-08. An example of the controversy stirred by the new black movies.
BOGLE, DONALD. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
BOWSER, PEARL. "The Boom is Really an Echo." Black Creation IV (Winter 1973): 32-35. Brief, derivative, interesting history of race movies between the World Wars.
BROWN, ROSCOE C. "Film as a Tool for Liberation?" Black Creation IV (Winter 1973) : 36-37. A special pleading for a broader participation by blacks in filmmaking.
CAWELTI, JOHN G. "Notes Toward an Aesthetic of Popular Culture." In Popular Culture and the Expanding Consciousness, edited by Ray B. Browne. New York: John Wiley, 1973. A tentative suggestion that the auteur theory of film criticism may enrich the evaluative tools of popular culture critics.
———. The Six-Gun Mystique. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1971. A traditional study of the western, combining literary and sociological techniques.
COLEMAN, HORACE W. "Melvin Van Peebles." Journal of Popular Culture V (Fall 1971) : 368-84.
CRIPPS, THOMAS. Black Shadows on the Silver Screen. Post-Newsweek Television, Ray Hubbard, Executive Producer, 1975. A one-hour television compilation-film that surveys the history of race movies.
———. "The Birth of a Race Company." Journal of Negro History LIX (January 1974): 28-37.
———. "The Death of Rastus: The Negro in American Films Since 1945." Phyton XXVIII (Fall 1967): 267-75.
———. "The Lincoln Motion Picture Company and the Birth of a Race Company: Two Early Strides Toward a Black Aesthetic." In "Film and Africana Politics" (mimeo), edited by Harold Weaver, Jr. New Brunswick, N.J.: Department of Africana Studies, Rutgers College, Rutgers University, 1973, pp. 1-26.
———. "The Movie Jew as an Image of Assimilationism, 1903-1927." Journal of Popular Film IV (3) : 190-207.
———. "Movies in the Ghetto Before Poitier." Negro Digest XVIII (February 1969) : 21-27; 45-48.
———. "Native Son in the Movies." New Letters XXXVIII (Winter 1972): 49-63. One of a very few analyses of an individual black movie and its maker.
———. "The Noble Black Savage: A Problem in the Politics of Television Art." Journal of Popular Culture VIII (Spring 1975) : 687-95. An attempt to show that a countervailing and decisive black influence upon a popular medium raises as many new problems as it solves old ones.
———. "Paul Robeson and Black Identity in American Movies." Massachusetts Review XI (Summer 1970) : 468-85.
———. Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American Films, 1900-1942. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
DWORKIN, MARTIN. "The New Negro on the Screen." Progressive XXIV (October-December 1960) : 39-41. A useful survey of postwar black roles in Hollywood films.
FRANKLIN, OLIVER. On Black Film: A Film and Lecture Series Presented by the Annenberg Center for the Communication Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1973. A useful compendium of interview, filmography, and articles.
GLAESSNER, VERINA. Kung Fu: Cinema of Vengeance. New York: Bounty Books, 1974. A good anatomy of the genre that usurped young black audience attention in the declining years of "blaxploitation" movies.
———. "The Negro in Contemporary Cinema." Film (Spring 1971): n.p.
GOLDWYN, RONALD. "The Scar of Shame." Discover [Sunday Bulletin (Philadelphia)], November 17, 1974: 14-23. The best article on the provenance of one black film.
GREEN, THEOPHILUS. "The Black Man as Movie Hero." Ebony XXVII (August 1972): 144-48.
GULLIVER, ADELAID CROMWELL, ed. Black Images in Films: Stereotyping and Self-Perception as Viewed by Black Actresses. Boston: Boston University Afro-American Studies Program, 1974. A symposium with Susan Batson, Cynthia Belgrave, Ruby Dee, Beah Richards, and Cicely Tyson, with essays by Joseph Boskin, Carlton Moss, and Thomas Cripps.
HARRIS, MIDDLETON, comp. The Black Book. New York: Random House, 1974. Good for its few illustrations of ephemera such as black movie posters.
HENNEBELLE, GUY. L'Afrique Literaire et Artistique: Les Cinemas Africains en 1972. Dakar, Senegal: Société Africaine d'Edition, 1972. A source of otherwise inaccessible data.
HIGGINS, CHESTER. "Black Films: Boom or Bust." Jet XLII (June 8, 1972): n.p.
HIPPENMEYER, JEAN-ROLAND. Jazz sur Films ou 55 Années de Rapports Jazz-Cinema vus a travers plus de 800 Films tournéxs entre 1917 et 1972. Yverdon, Switzerland: Editions de la Thiele, 1973. The most thorough of several European chronicles of jazz-film.
HOBERMAN, JIM. "A Forgotten Black Cinema Surfaces." Village Voice (New York), November 17, 1975, 1 ff. See also New York Daily News, March 9, 1975.
HUGHES, LANGSTON, andMILTON MELTZER , eds. Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the Negro in American Entertainment. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967. A survey with a brief section on film, illustrated with stills.
HURD, LAURA E. "Director Ossie Davis Talks About Black Girl." Black Creation IV (Winter 1973): 38-39. A rare interview with a practicing black director.
"Jam Session in Movieland." Ebony I (November 1945): 6-9. A postwar black liberal estimate of Jammin' the Blues.
JEROME, V.J. The Negro in Hollywood Films. New York: Masses & Mainstream, 1950.
JOHNSON, ALBERT. "Beige, Brown or Black." Film Quarterly XIII (Fall 1959):38-43.
———. "The Negro in American Films: Some Recent Works." Film Quarterly XVIII (Summer 1965) : 14-30.
KAGAN, NORMAN. "Black American Cinema." Cinema VI (Fall 1970) : 2-7. A derivative piece.
KAMINSKY, STUART M. American Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film. New York: Laurel Edition, 1977.
KOTLOWITZ, ROBERT. "The Making of Angel Levine ." In Film 69/70, edited by Joseph Morgenstern and Stefan Kanfer, pp. 175-81. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. A rare essay on the problems of production.
LANDAY, EILEEN. Black Film Stars. New York: Drake, 1973. A hardback fan letter.
LEAB, DANIEL J. "The Black in Films: An Annotated Bibliography." Journal of Popular Film IV (1975), 345-56.
———. From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.
LIMBACHER, JAMES L. "Blacks on Film: A Selected List . . . ." Journal of Popular Film IV (1975): 358-78.
———, and BARBARA BRYANT. Minorities in Film I. Minorities in Film II. Minorities in Film III. In "Shadows on the Wall" TV series. Detroit: Wayne State University College of Lifelong Learning, 1975.
MAPP, EDWARD. Blacks in American Films: Today and Yesterday. Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1972.
MATTOX, MICHAEL. "The Day Black Movie Stars Got Militant." Black Creation IV (Winter 1973) : 40-42. A breezy account of the founding and work of the Black Artists Alliance.
MAYNARD, RICHARD A. The Black Man on Film: Racial Stereotyping. Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden Book, 1974. A small book that rescues a few important pieces from oblivion, among them Floyd Covington's "The Negro Invades Hollywood," an optimistic article on black employment in Hollywood in the 1920s from the Urban League organ, Opportunity; Robert Benchley's review of Hallelujah! and Sterling Brown's assault on Imitation of Life, both for Opportunity; Ralph Ellison's careful essay on Intruder in the Dust; James Baldwin's barbed review of Carmen Jones; and several pointed comments on recent black movies from New York Times critics.
METZ, CHRISTIAN. Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. An important work for understanding genre film in terms of structural linguistics.
MICHENER, CHARLES. "Black Movies." Newsweek LXXV (October 23, 1972) : 74-82. In Black Man on Film, edited by Richard A. Maynard, pp. 96-104. One of several critical pieces on the rise of the blaxploitation film.
"Mister Washington Goes to Town." Time XXXV (April 29, 1940): 84. An unusual review of a black film in a white magazine.
MOSS,CARLTON. "The Negro in American Films." Freedomways III (Spring 1963): 134-42.
MUNDEN, KENNETH J. "A Contribution to the Psychological Understanding of the Cowboy and His Myth." American Imago XV (Summer 1958) : 103-48. A pioneer work on film seen as myth.
———, ed. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures xProduced in the United States, 1921-1930. New York: R. R. Bowker, 1971. One of a series in progress that will catalog all American films. A useful topical index allows a close examination of black film production, although no indication is made as to whether a film survives or where it is located.
MURRAY, JAMES P. "A Futuristic Fable." Black Creation IV (Winter 1973) :43. Fanciful anatomy of elements necessary to accomplish a black film tradition.
———. "The Subject is Money." Black Creation IV (Winter 1973) : 26 ff. Details on the obstacles facing prospective black filmmakers in Hollywood.
———. To Find an Image: Black Films from Uncle Tom to Super Fly. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973.
NOBLE, PETER, The Negro in Films. London: S. Robinson, 1948.
PATTERSON, LINDSAY. Black Films and Film-makers: A Comprehensive Anthology from Stereotype of Superhero. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975. The best available anthology. It includes familiar pieces such as Richard Wesley's "Which Way the Black Film," from Encore; Maurice Peterson's "Book of Numbers", an account of the making of a film, from Essence; and Pauline Kael's long, careful New Yorker story, "Notes on Black Movies."
PEAVY, CHARLES D. "Black Consciousness and the Contemporary Cinema." In Popular Culture and the Expanding Consciousness, edited by Ray B. Browne. New York: Wiley, 1973. The best essay on the impact of modern cinema on blacks.
PINES, JIM. Blacks in the Cinema: The Changing Image. London: Studio Vista, 1971. A polemical pamphlet published on the occasion of a British Film Institute black film series, and later expanded into the present book. A curiously interesting, though flawed, expatriate perspective.
POUSSAINT, ALVIN. "Cheap Thrills That Degrade Blacks." Psychology Today VII (February 1974): 22, 26-27, 30, 38, 98. An essay by another hostile witness in the trial of blaxploitation movies.
PROPP, VLADIMIR. The Morphology of the Folk Tale. Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1968. Structuralism applied to folklore, a useful tool for students of American film genres.
RILEY, CLAYTON. "What Makes Sweetback Run?" New York Times, May 9, 1971, sec. 2, p. 4.
SAMPSON, HENRY T. Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films. Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1977. A pioneering effort to make a research tool.
SHALES, TOM. "The Emperor Jones." In The American Film Heritage: Impressions from the American Film Institute Archives, edited by Tom Shales, Kevin Brownlow, et al., pp. 70-74. Washington, D. C.: Acropolis Books, 1972. A brief recent critical essay.
SOLOMON, STANLEY J. Beyond Formula: American Film Genres. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976.
"Spirit of Youth." Time XXXI (January 31, 1938): 35-37. A review of Grand National's biography of Joe Louis.
TATE, CECIL F. The Search for a Method in American Studies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1973. A useful sampling of possible methods of interpreting genre film, based on the work of Henry Nash Smith, Roy Harvey Pearce, John Ward, and R. W. B. Lewis.
THOMPSON, ROBERT FARRIS. "An Aesthetic of the Cool." African Arts VII (Autumn 1973) : 41-43, 64-67, 89-92. An important and earnest attempt to sketch a prologomena to understanding aesthetique du cool.
TUDOR, ANDREW. Image and Influence: Studies in the Sociology of Film. London: Allen & Unwin, 1974. A sensible book, willing to take risks in the cause of seeking a social basis for understanding movies. A good criticism of structuralists and semiologists with a good chapter on genres.
VAN PEEBLES, MELVIN. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. New York: Lancer Books, 1971. A self-consciously outrageous and scatological history of the making of the title movie. The best single expression of the outlawry and rebellion that black intellectual genre filmmakers hoped would become the identifying mode of the genre.
VIDOR, KING. A Tree is a Tree. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953. Vidor's autobiography, with a chapter on Hallelujah!
WARD, RENEE. "Black Films, White Profits." Black Scholar VII (May 1976):13-25.
WARNER, VIRGINIA. "The Negro Soldier: A Challenge to Hollywood." In The Documentary Tradition from Nanook to Woodstock, edited by Lewis Jacobs, pp.224-25. New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1971.
WARSHOW, ROBERT. The Immediate Experience. Garden City, N. Y. : Doubleday, 1964. Contains two essays on genre that have elicited almost worshipful praise for their sensitive insights.
WRIGHT, WILL. Six Guns and Society : A Structural Study of the Western. Berkeley: University of California Press,1975. The first attempt to study a popular film genre using the methods of the structural anthropologists.
ZITO, STEPHEN. "The Black Film Experience." In The American Film Heritage: Impressions from the American Film Institute Archives, edited by Tom Shales, Kevin Brownlow, et al, pp. 61-69. Washington, D. C.: Acropolis Books, 1972. A good early statement of the aspirations of race movies.
In addition to these essays, the regional black press as well as the New York Times, often carries both light and serious comment on black film. Reviews of specific films may be found also by checking the Times index and comparing it with other newspapers and magazines. Also the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature provides a handy source for the discovery of otherwise fugitive pieces, along with research centers that promise to develop from programs of Chamba Productions in New York, the Oakland Museum in California, and the recently opened black archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills.
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