Reframing the Narrative and Centering the Global Majority
Story and Image have the power to move people to great things and to relegate them to less than their divine potential. Since the late 19th century moving pictures have been used to promote international values. What has that meant for Global Majority People? Black men and women filmmakers were there at the beginning of cinema dramatizing on the screen our lives as we are living them. Start here to learn about Black cinema, where we’ve been and where we are.
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Featured Content
101 Essential Black Films
In 2022 the Knnarrative community are invited to join Maria Judice’s virtual screening series with a post-discussion wrap-up deconstructing themes, historical context, Black art movements, actors, political thinkers, and Black film as a mode of protest, deconstruction, and radical imagination. Each film had its own set of supplemental materials that includes links, articles, essays, books, and participant knowledge to further study and discussion. The list is seminal but not terminal and additional films suggestions are welcome.
101 Essential Pan-African Films
101 Essential Pan-African Films was also created by Maria Judice as a live open source document about education and investigation for those seeking a Pan-African reference and lens in cinema. She says,” Thinking of the list as “those films that transformed me as a human and shifted my experience as a Black woman in the world. Not all films are by Black filmmakers but I believe all films have set a significant point in time in Black cinema whether in or outside of Hollywood and trying to have no more than 101 essential Black films (Social Structure).
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Black Films as Protest
Began as a response to the George Floyd murder, Black Uprisings, and the Administration's mishandling of C19. "Black Film as Protest" referred to answers that people concerned with Black Lives were looking for and found in Black cinema for more than a century. The theme invites us to engage in discussions related to domestic violence, artists life, and legacy, inter-generational life, poverty, rural life, art, healing, liberation, grief, death, Black history, Black archive understanding, and radical acts of imagination.
Black Cinema Study:
10 Films, 10 Decades
Story and Image have the power to move people to great things and to relegate them to less than their divine potential. Since the late 19th century moving pictures have been used to promote international values. What has that meant for Global Majority People? Black men and women filmmakers were there at the beginning of cinema dramatizing on the screen our lives as we are living them. Start here to learn about Black cinema, where we’ve been and where we are headed and to explore the question ‘What is Black Film?’
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Oscar Micheaux Filmography
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Within Our Gates (1919)
A Silent Film by Oscar Micheaux
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Underworld (1937)
A Film By Oscar Micheaux
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Swing! (1938)
A Film by Oscar Micheaux
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God's Stepchildren (1938)
A Film By Oscar Micheaux
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Ten Minutes To Live (1932)
A Film by Oscar Micheaux
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The Girl From Chicago (1932)
A Film by Oscar Micheaux
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Murder In Harlem (1935)
A Film by Oscar Micheaux
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Lying Lips (1939)
A Film by Oscar Micheaux
Film Pioneers
Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951)
Micheaux was an African-American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race film, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century". -- Wiki
Tressie Souders (1897 – 1995)
It is not yet known how Tressie Souders got into the film-making business... In January 1922, the Afro-American Film Exhibitors Company of Kansas City, contracted with Souders to distribute her film "A Woman's Error". Billboard Magazine for January 28, 1922 published the company's announcement that "'A Woman's Error' was the first of its kind to be produced by a young woman of our race, and has been passed on by the critics as a picture true to Negro life." -- Wiki
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Noble Johnson (1881-1978)
Standing 6'2" at 215 pounds, his impressive physique and handsome features made him in demand as a character actor and bit player. In the silent era, he assayed a wide variety of characters of different races in a plethora of films, primarily serials, westerns and adventure movies. While Johnson was cast as Black in many films, he also played Native American and Latino parts and "exotic" characters such as Arabians or even a devil in hell in Dante's Inferno (1924). -- Wiki