LW340 Black Cinema:American Myth, Racial Ideology and Hollywood 3CR

“What is “”Black Cinema”“? How did “”Black Cinema”” originate? What gives “”Black Cinema”” a distinct voice of its own? Must “”Black Cinema”” only be directed by African Americans, feature an all Black cast, or only address a Black audience and “”Black issues”” in order to qualify as “”Black Cinema”“? Should we differentiate between “”Black Cinema”” and “”Cinema”“? What are the ethical, social and political implications central to making these distinctions? This course examines those questions while chronicling the history and present state of “”Black Cinema”“(from the early 20th century filmmaking of Oscar Micheaux; Blaxploitation films of Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles; fiction films by Charles Burnett, Spike Lee, Lee Daniels, Steve McQueen and Dee Rees; documentaries by Marlon Riggs, Stanley Nelson and June Cross; as well as animation films made for TV and media streamed online). Despite the contributions to cinema by these distinguished people of African descent, there remains a significant need for Black cinema studies within the broader areas of Africana Studies in the US and abroad. For these reasons, this course explores how Black authorship, content and reception have been defined and reconsidered in relation to dominant American myths, racial ideology and film industry practices, that have long presented limited and distorted social and political constructs of African Americans and the African Diaspora in cinema. This course challenges those portrayals and assumptions through thoughtful inquiries into the intricate modes of racial coding of moving images.

Prerequisites: LW-100 & FRSM-100

Fall Only