Black Women Film & Video Artists

Black Women Film & Video Artists is a welcome addition to a growing body of work on women filmmakers of color. Bobo has edited a remarkable anthology of groundbreaking new work in the history and theory of black women such as Madeline Anderson, Carroll Parrott Blue, Jacqueline Shearer, Alile Sharon Larkin, Kathleen Collins, Julie Dash, Camille Billops, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Michelle Parkerson. This anthology is notable for its contextualization of these artists within a framework of black feminist cultural critical methodologies, and for the inclusion of black women film and video artists in their own words in essays and interviews. Though it does not seek to provide a comprehensive history, it certainly is an important new critical volume that should be read by both professor and student alike.

Jacqueline Bobo, who is well known for her earlier critical writing in Black Women as Cultural Readers (1995), provides a much-needed overview and critical perspective of the field in her opening chapter, “Black Women’s Films: Genesis of Tradition.” Bobo notes that the widespread interest in black women in film has been slowly evolving in recent years. Yet, with the exception of the excitement over and critical reception of Julie Dash, director of Daughters of the Dust (1991), there is a “substantial body of work created by Black women film/videomakers” that has been overlooked by film historians and critics.

Though many are now familiar with the work of Oscar Micheaux, few are aware of the significant contributions of early African-American women filmmakers such as Eloyce Gist, Eslanda Goode Robeson, and Zora Neale Hurston. Eloyce Gist, for example, was a contemporary of Oscar Micheaux who directed and self-distributed evangelical films as a touring evangelist.

Two of her films, Hellbound Train and Verdict Not Guilty, are currently being restored by the Library of Congress. It is unfortunate that Black Women Film & Video Artists does not include a chapter-length study on Eloyce Gist and other overlooked and rediscovered early black women filmmakers; however, the anthology is not designed as a comprehensive survey of black women directors.

The book is divided into three sections: “Critical Perspectives,” “Critical Practice,” and “In Their Own Words.” In the first section, Ntongela Masilela provides a rich examination of the Los Angeles School of African-American filmmakers, concentrating on Barbara McCullough, Carroll Parrott Blue, Julie Dash, and Alile Sharon Larkin. The struggle between the revolutionary tenets of the group, which worked to define black aesthetics against the grain of dominant Hollywood aesthetics, is read within the larger framework of black independent filmmaking. Gloria J.

Gibson provides a critical overview of black women filmmakers who work to explore cultural memory, revealing “The Ties That Bind” diasporic films of black women. Monique Guillory’s “The Functional Family of Camille Billops” is a trenchant analysis of the films of Camille Billops which draws parallels between Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Billops’ Finding Christa.

In the second section of this book we find some of the most fascinating and compelling reading. “Critical Practice” includes five chapters written by filmmakers themselves, among them Carol Munday Lawrence, who successfully worked to convince public television executives that there was a viable nationwide audience for black programming. Lawrence notes that in the 70s, African-American filmmakers were still so few in number that “we all knew or had at least heard of one another”.

The importance of black networking is highlighted in Jacqueline Shearer’s recounting of the making of The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry (1991), a televised documentary about the first black regiment (Glory [1989] was a fictionalized and historically inaccurate account of the regiment).

Shearer, who was offered the project by Llew Smith, an African-American producer with whom she had worked on the “‘Eyes on the Prize” series, was aided by a supportive network of black actors and producers, and by cinematographer Arthur Jafa. Similarly, O. Funmilayo Makarah recounts that through “the nurturing environment created by [Charles] Burnett, [Shirley] Clarke and other Black and Third World students [in L.A.], [she] was able to really grow as a film and videomaker”.

Makarah is well known for her video installation on the Rodney King incident, which was designed for the California African-American Museum in Los Angeles. All of the essayist-filmmakers deal with the politics of representation–Carmen Coustant directly confronts the burden of representation with her defense of romantic love as a viable subject for cinematic representation in “Love on My Mind: Creating Black Women’s Love Stories.” Bobo has allowed for such a wide aim and scope in this anthology that C.
A. Griffith’s brilliant polemic on the need for scholars to recognize the input of “below the line” workers (such as camera, lighting and sound technicians) does not seem out of place. Her essay, “‘Below the
Line: (Re) Calibrating the Filmic Gaze,” is a unique exemplification of a writer and filmmaker who is as at home with theory as she is with practice.

The interviews with black women creative artists in the anthology’s final section offer insight into and perspective on black women’s cultural history. In an interview with Gloria J. Hudson, filmmaker Michelle Parkerson candidly recounts the homophobia she met in both black and white communities. Parkerson is perhaps best known for directing Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Boy (1987) about a black woman who performed as a male impersonator at a drag review. Less well known is Parkerson’s eight-year quest for funding of her film Odds and Ends (1993), an African-American sci-fi film set in the year 2086. Parkerson draws parallels between discrimination against African-Americans and gays and lesbians, especially with regard to funding and distribution, noting, “the complicity of these kinds of oppression is a chain-link”.

Ntozake Shange, who is interviewed by P. Jane Splawn, draws broader strokes around the issue of the study of black representation: “The methodology has to be changed from the perspective of the owners down to the perspectives of the people who were once owned”.

These words perhaps capture the essence of the spirit of Black Women Film & Video Artists, and Jacqueline Bobo is to be commended for collecting and editing this fresh series of essays and interviews. (She also provides a suggested course design that can be taught either on the quarter or semester system, and a very useful filmography with a list of sources and a directory of distributors.)

In addition to revising and re-envisioning the field of black women’s visual cultural history, this book provides a balance between theory and practice. Perhaps its publication will inspire film historians and critics to rethink mainstream white canonized film theory and history as much as it will inspire others to begin the hard work of decolonizing the gaze of our students and ourselves