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This work examines and analyzes how the cinematic image of African Americans became a fixed image with strict rules of depiction both written and unwritten. And, how those very limited and under-informed images would not and could not be challenged or transformed until the power relations in the American film industry began to change and afforded blacks the opportunity at the very least to tell stories from an informed position.

African Americans in motion pictures. --- Afro-Americans in motion pictures --- Negroes in moving-pictures --- Motion pictures --- Race films

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Cripps delineates the elements of black film genre in a brilliant essay, and then analyzes six films and their position in the genre. The Scar of Shame, a silent classic, is a social drama which expresses black economic aspiration. The St. Louis Blues uses the black musical idiom to express dramatic conflict, and features Bessie Smith's only film appearance. The Blood of Jesus speaks with primitive conviction to a black religious fundamentalism. The U.S. Army film, The Negro Soldier, is a strong advocate for black social goals, despite the constraints imposed by its sponsor. The critically acclaimed Nothing but a Man celebrates a heroic pastoralism through a visually symbolic narrative. The author's final example is Sweet Sweet - back's Baadasssss Song, the most notorious of the recent "blaxploitation" films. The book concludes with a useful survey of black film criticism and features a bibliography, a filmography, and illustrations from the films.

African Americans in motion pictures. --- Afro-Americans in motion pictures --- Negroes in moving-pictures --- Motion pictures --- Race films --- Film history, theory & criticism

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In the early 1900's, so-called race filmmakers set out to produce black-oriented pictures to counteract the racist caricatures that had dominated cinema from its inception. Richard E. Norman, a southern-born white filmmaker, was one such pioneer. From humble beginnings as a roving ""home talent"" filmmaker, recreating photo plays that starred local citizens, Norman would go on to produce high-quality feature-length race pictures. Together with his better-known contemporaries Oscar Micheaux and Noble and George Johnson, Richard E. Norman helped to define early race film making. Making use of

African Americans in motion pictures. --- Race films. --- Afro-Americans in motion pictures --- Negroes in moving-pictures --- Motion pictures --- Race films --- Race movies --- African Americans in motion pictures --- African Americans in the motion picture industry --- Norman, Richard E., --- Norman, R. E. --- Criticism and interpretation.

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Young, the film's producer and cinematographer, and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

African Americans in motion pictures. --- Race relations in motion pictures. --- Afro-Americans in motion pictures --- Negroes in moving-pictures --- Motion pictures --- Race films --- Nothing but a man (Motion picture)

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Viewing turn-of-the-century African American history through the lens of cinema, Envisioning Freedom examines the forgotten history of early black film exhibition during the era of mass migration and Jim Crow. By embracing the new medium of moving pictures at the turn of the twentieth century, black Americans forged a collective-if fraught-culture of freedom. In Cara Caddoo's perspective-changing study, African Americans emerge as pioneers of cinema from the 1890s to the 1920s. Across the South and Midwest, moving pictures presented in churches, lodges, and schools raised money and created shared social experiences for black urban communities. As migrants moved northward, bound for Chicago and New York, cinema moved with them. Along these routes, ministers and reformers, preaching messages of racial uplift, used moving pictures as an enticement to attract followers. But as it gained popularity, black cinema also became controversial. Facing a losing competition with movie houses, once-supportive ministers denounced the evils of the "colored theater." Onscreen images sparked arguments over black identity and the meaning of freedom. In 1910, when boxing champion Jack Johnson became the world's first black movie star, representation in film vaulted to the center of black concerns about racial progress. Black leaders demanded self-representation and an end to cinematic mischaracterizations which, they charged, violated the civil rights of African Americans. In 1915, these ideas both led to the creation of an industry that produced "race films" by and for black audiences and sparked the first mass black protest movement of the twentieth century.

Race films. --- African Americans in motion pictures. --- African Americans in the motion picture industry. --- African Americans --- Motion pictures --- Motion picture audiences --- Film audiences --- Filmgoers --- Moviegoers --- Moving-picture audiences --- Performing arts --- Cinema --- Feature films --- Films --- Movies --- Moving-pictures --- Audio-visual materials --- Mass media --- Afro-Americans in the motion picture industry --- Negroes in the moving-picture industry --- Motion picture industry --- Race films --- Afro-Americans in motion pictures --- Negroes in moving-pictures --- Race movies --- African Americans in motion pictures --- African Americans in the motion picture industry --- Social life and customs. --- Distribution --- Audiences --- History and criticism