You are such an observant child. Some may call you “well-behaved” or “quiet,” but I too was given these descriptors when I was young. Being well-behaved & quiet nurtured my constant constant watching, my constant constant listening. In particular, my mother was the subject of my observations.
ABFF 2023: The Documentarians Really Shine
The Black Film Center & Archive tuned in to this year’s American Black Film Festival utilizing ABFF Play. It’s always a letdown to figure out that the entire festival lineup won’t be mirrored in the online component. I personally was anticipating Black Barbie: The Documentary, to witness a deepening of discourse in a media climate hot for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, but I’ll just have to find this particular deepening elsewhere. Nonetheless, the documentarians featured on ABFF Play for this year’s festival really shined.
“We Started Out With Trust”: a profile on filmmaker Kyra Knox
Philadelphia native Kyra Knox is among the filmmakers the Black Film Center & Archive connected with during our recent outreach efforts. Serendipitously, she was scheduled to work a commercial set on IU Bloomington’s campus, where we’re located, & she was able to stop by for a tour. (We shared an overview of this visit in the April 2023 newsletter; click here to receive monthly BFCA updates!) After learning Knox’s feature documentary Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia will premiere at the American Black Film Festival, we caught up with her again online, alongside Mark Mims who serves as an Executive Producer on the film.
Top 5 Black Films at the 2023 Atlanta Film Festival
The 2023 Atlanta Film Festival ran April 20-30th with a virtual component accessible through the first week of May. I wasn’t able to join the exclusive in-person events this year, but there were plenty of films by Black creators to gush over from here in Bloomington, Indiana. I quite literally laughed & cried & gasped, & I took advantage of the 48-hour rewatch window to spend more time with scenes that got all these visceral reactions out of me. Keep reading for a take on my personal top 5, then a special section I’m calling “Unexpected Connections” that’s really just me wanting to write about more films that made me feel things.
The Trooper of Troop K: Rediscovering Footage from the Earliest Black Film Production Company
Although Black Americans began producing films in the earliest days of the moving pictures, nearly all of these films from the silent period (1896-1927) are lost. For decades, film historians have believed that the earliest surviving Black produced films date to the 1920s. Recently, Cara Caddoo (Associate Professor in the Department of History and The Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington) identified footage from a long assumed lost film, The Trooper of Troop K, produced by the Black-operated Lincoln Motion Picture Company in 1916. Below, she provides some background about the film, which is the earliest known surviving footage from a black film company.
Clip from The Trooper of Troop K (1916), edited from the original digitized footage by Andrew Grodner.
In May 1916, four Black men, Noble Johnson, J. Thomas Smith, Clarence and Dudley Brooks, and Harry Gant, a white camera operator, organized the Lincoln Motion Picture Company to produce “Negro moving pictures that will reflect merit and credit upon the race, as well as opening a field of employment to Negroes and an opportunity to make profitable financial investments.” [1] Soon after, Noble Johnson’s brother George P. Johnson joined the company as its Booking Manager.
The Trooper of Troop K, produced in 1916, was the Lincoln’s second feature film. The production ran into problems from the start. Noble had to balance his responsibilities as the Lincoln’s President and star actor with his work as a full-time actor for Universal. At the time, actors generally worked six days a week, Monday to Saturday, from sunup to sundown. That meant they only had Sundays, his only day off, to finish the film. Then, just as Trooper was nearly complete, a fire at the processing laboratory destroyed part of the footage, delaying the picture’s release date.
The Lincoln’s directors were devastated by the fire. But instead of giving up, they used the setback to their advantage. They expanded the film, added additional scenes, and ultimately produced what became the most profitable of all the Lincoln’s productions.
According to the company’s synopsis of Trooper, Joe (Noble Johnson) is “unkept and careless of dress,” and can’t seem to keep a job. He has a crush on a high school-educated girl from his hometown, Clara Holmes (Beulah Hall), who takes a charitable interest in his well-being, much to the dismay of her “ardent admirer” Jimmy, a popular man-about-town played by real-life Los Angeles heartthrob Jimmie Smith, who later became a well-known casting agent for Black actors in Hollywood. [2]
One day, Joe decides to spend his last pennies on flowers for Clara. But instead of impressing her, his gesture backfires. Clara tells him that he needs to “clean up his act.” Joe finds a job but arrives late because of his “deep love and sympathy for animals.” Flustered, he accidentally drops a hod of bricks on his foreman and is summarily fired. When Joe tells Clara what happened, she is disappointed. Jimmy (whose hard-working mother, a washerwoman, pays for his fancy clothes), responds with disgust. Clara suggests that Joe join the army, which she hopes will cure him of his “shiftiness.” [3]
In the army, Joe is “still a little crude and shiftless,” but his captain is charmed by his good-hearted nature and the way he takes care of his horse. When the men are dispatched to Mexico, Joe and his fellow soldiers are drawn into the Battle of Carrizal. The story ends happily after Clara reads about Joe’s accomplishments in the newspapers. She “denounces Jimmy for his false accusations,” and welcomes Joe home “with open arms.” [4]
The surviving footage from Trooper, which you see in the clip above, is only about fifteen seconds in length. Yet it’s filled with rich imagery—including the only footage we have of Noble Johnson in a Lincoln production. In the scene, Clara holds what appears to be a letter, which she excitedly reads to Jimmy. Next, we see a title card decorated with images of saguaro cacti— at the time, a common visual signifier of Mexico. The title card suggests that the scene occurs sometime after Joe has left for Mexico, while he is “doing duty…near Casas Grandes, Mexico,” and Jimmy is at home “finding it not so clear sailing with Clara.” When the film cuts from the title card back to Jimmy and Clara, we see a quick iris shot of Noble appear behind Jimmy’s shoulder. The look on Clara’s face—jealousy? concern? indignation?—surely alludes to a turning point in her relationship with Jimmy and her feelings about Joe.
When the United States began gearing up for World War I, Trooper became a symbol of the vital importance of Black Americans to the nation’s war efforts. According to the synopsis, Joe is transformed by his experiences as a soldier–but in the end, it’s the army that depends on him. In an act of bravery, Joe saves his captain and distinguishes himself on the battlefield. Yet the popularity of Trooper should not be simply interpreted as an indication of its audiences’ unquestioning patriotism. When another picture featuring heroic Black soldiers, From Harlem to the Rhine, screened at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem in 1920, a young man in attendance refused to remove his hat during the performance of “The Star Spangled Banner,” explaining, “the American flag meant nothing to him.” [5]
As brief as it is, this remarkable clip from Trooper offers a glimpse at some the reasons why so many African Americans loved the picture. Clearly, it’s beautifully composed, the acting is charming, and the use of special effects offer a bit of well-placed humor. As I’ve written in my book Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life, such films are not only evidence of African Americans’ contributions to the making of American cinema but also of the vital importance of moving pictures to the forging of a Black post-emancipation culture of freedom and enjoyment. [6]
To learn more about the process involved in identifying The Trooper of Troop K, click here or hop over to the Library of Congress’s Now See Hear! blog.
Notes:
[1] “Some Facts Concerning the Lincoln Motion Picture Co., Inc., and its Productions,” GPJ Box 55, folder 2.
[2] Handbill, “The Trooper of Company K,” c. 1916, Box 55, George P. Johnson Negro Film Collection, 1916–1977, University of California, Los Angeles, Library Special Collections.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] New York Age, May 22, 1920, p. 6.
[6] Cara Caddoo, Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). For more about the role of leisure in Black life after emancipation, see Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
Phil Moore: Seven Careers in One Great Lifetime (Composer, Arranger, Songwriter, Conductor, Instrumentalist, Coach, Producer)
Renèe C. Baker visited the Black Film Center & Archive in May 2022 to conduct research on the Phil Moore Collection. Ms. Baker wrote the following post documenting her findings and thoughts.
In 2016, my first encounter with the genius composer/arranger Phil Moore occurred. While nosing through boxes that had not yet been catalogued nor digitized, I opened a box to find handwritten score manuscripts of a little-known composer. Why was I not aware of this composer and his music? The number of boxes (71) spoke to his prolific nature as a writer. Touching practically every milieu in sound arts from television to film, from night club acts to musicals as well as arthouse music, Phil Moore missed no beats between genres. Every box of envelopes revealed yet one more arena in which he imprinted his influence.
With an innate ability to convincingly move at a brilliant pace while influencing practically anything that was being listened to from the 30s to mid 50s, Moore had a great touch of magic, probably without knowing it.
Every encounter I’ve had with the Black Film Center & Archive spawned projects that have had profound impact on my practices as composer, artist and filmmaker. As I went through the materials, I’m suddenly aware of the history that I’m holding, touching, and seeing. Scores of luminaries like composer Quincy Jones, entertainers like Clifton Davis, actor Lou Gossett and Cicely Tyson, singers like Johnny Mathis, were all collaborators that Phil Moore arranged music for or coached and assisted. From the talents of Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Leslie Uggams, Marilyn McCoo, Bobby Short, Scatman Crothers, all were helped on their professional paths by Moore’s gift of reaching in and pulling the best out of these already talented pros.
With his credits known publicly, would the moniker Phil Moore become a household name like his famous colleagues?
Looking at a photo of Mr. Moore in his piano studio, I can see album covers of notable artist collaborations: Bobby Short, Lena Horne, LaVern Baker, Don Elliott, Jackie Paris, Julie Wilson, Judy Garland, Perry Como, Marilyn Monroe, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, Goldie Hawn, Dandridge Sisters (including Dorothy), Tom Jones, Ava Gardner, Louis Armstrong, Tallulah Bankhead, Meredith Wilson, Frank Sinatra, Jane Russell, Herb Alpert, Rosemary Clooney, Ray Charles, The Supremes, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Bing Crosby, and Buddy Rich…Did I miss anyone?
Renée Baker is founding music director and conductor of the internationally acclaimed Chicago Modern Orchestra Project. She has composed more than 2,000 works for various ensembles around the world. In composing for silent cinema, she has created cutting-edge original scores for more than 100 films and performed her work at live screening events and film festivals. Renée’s film scores include Body and Soul (1925), Broken Blossoms (1919), Women of Ryazan (1927), An Orphan (1929), Birth of a Nation (1915), A Natural Born Gambler (1916), and The Bluebird (1918), to name a few.
The Guiding Spirit of Paulin S. Vieyra
Sometimes opportunities and their significance sneak up on you. I was merely doing my job, but this summer my work contributed to revelatory cultural, and scholarly impact on the field of Black film and on me: I got to help process the papers and materials of a pioneering Francophone African filmmaker. These papers can change the narrative of African cinema.
I’d been prepared to support this endeavor as an archival assistant for the Black Film Center & Archive (BFCA) but I had no idea of how critical this process would be in the years and decades to come until about a week before we were to head to the Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF) to unpack, sort, and process Paulin Vieyra’s materials. Not long after we were notified that the collection had been received at the ALF from France, I, along with two other members of the BFCA staff, Amber and Dan, headed over to the facility to begin unpacking, sorting, organizing, and processing the collection.
Vieyra’s materials were contained in rectangular metal canteens of varying colors and upon opening each one, we found the materials tightly bound with plastic saran wrap. Each bundle was carefully removed from its canteen, placed on the table, and photographed. After we’d uploaded the photo to its respective folder in the BFCA OneDrive, with great care, we unwrapped the bundle. With Amber and Dan, I began processing the documents, papers, and photographs in the collection. As I sorted through the various papers and documents, I logged our findings onto a spreadsheet to properly account for the items contained in the collection.
Once the first saran wrapped items were removed from their respective canteens, unwrapped and carefully arranged on the processing table, and once I held letters, photographs, screenplays, and various manuscripts in my own hands, it didn’t take long for me to feel overcome by wonder and disbelief that I was having the immense privilege of having a hand in making this transformative collection available to passionate and erudite scholars of African cinema. I was overwhelmed by the possibility of the stories that could be told and shaped out of these materials and by the idea that the lens through which African cinema has been seen might be entirely reframed because of this indispensable donation. As I beheld the patchwork beauty of Vieyra’s life and work, I was stunned by what it revealed about his commitment to and advocacy of African filmmakers reshaping the narrative of Africa in his own time and stewarding the subjectivity of its people through the gaze and stories of its own native sons and daughters.
As we sorted through the materials and documented the findings in our spreadsheet, I couldn’t help but linger and take a moment to feel and review the letters and manuscripts. Despite their being written mostly in French, they spoke to me. I studied some of the stunning photos with the most interesting tableaus and some of the most beautiful faces evincing a panorama of emotions and illustrating an arresting interiority. Other materials such as Vieyra’s original screenplays and, particularly, a signed French language manuscript of Aimé Césaire’s “King Christophe” stopped me in my tracks as an admirer of Césaire and his work. As an emerging archivist, I’ve had some previous experience sorting and processing material collections that were immeasurably significant in their singular way but I felt that this moment, an opportunity of this magnitude, needed to be savored and demanded my full presence of focus. Working through the collection felt like communing with the spirit of Paulin Vieyra, as if over the course of a few weeks he generously guided me through his mind, his purpose, his life, his world, his art.
Through my brief encounter with Vieyra’s materials, I feel just as transformed as the landscape of world cinema and the resulting scholarship will be. Being able to play an active role in helping to expand the research and scholarship around African cinema strongly imbued me with a desire to more deeply engage films by African filmmakers and the resulting research and scholarship that provides perspectives and angles through which these works and the artists that produce them can be interpreted and seen. It was a privilege and honor to be given a chance to contribute to an introduction to this seminal figure in African and, ultimately, world cinema.
MarQuis Bullock currently works as an archival assistant with the Black Film Center & Archive and is pursuing a Master’s in Library Science with a specialization in archives and records management at Indiana University-Bloomington. He spent seven years working in Interpretation with the National Park Service where he researched and developed public programming spanning the subjects of school desegregation in the South, enslavement in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Unpacking the Treasures of the BFC/A’s New Paulin S. Vieyra Collection
If you’re not familiar with Beninese/Senegalese director Paulin Vieyra (1925-1987), you are missing out on one of the key figures in African and world film history. One of the fathers of African cinema, Vieyra’s life and prolific work as a filmmaker, historian, and essayist track closely with the development of African filmmaking in the period of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. Vieyra’s trailblazing Afrique sur Seine (1955) was the first film directed by a French-speaking sub-Saharan African. As the first head of newly-independent Senegal’s Office for Radio Broadcasting and Television and the Sciences and Information Technology Research Centre, Vieyra cultivated one of the first national African film industries. In this role, he produced and promoted the works of luminaries like Ousmane Sembène, co-founded enduring organizations like the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FESPACI) and the Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO), and widely published on the challenges of establishing a post-colonial cinematic identity.
Now, thanks to a generous donation to the BFC/A from his youngest son Stéphane, the scope of Paulin Vieyra’s accomplishments may now finally be accessible to researchers and historians around the world. The Paulin S. Vieyra Collection arrived at IU’s Auxiliary Library Facility (ALF) in June 2021 in seven large crates. These crates housed thousands of items and documents charting the story of Vieyra’s career and interests: films, home movies, interviews with other African directors, founding documents and mission statements for dozens of conferences and festivals, screenplays and synopses, rare photographs and posters, scholarly manuscripts, letters and correspondence between Vieyra and various cultural and political figures, and personal artifacts like cameras, awards, and Vieyra’s own typewriter. The materials arrived to the ALF carefully packaged in plastic-wrapped bundles that, though loosely grouped together by theme and material type, were largely disorganized.
Over the course of a month, I helped to process and sort through these materials with BFC/A archivist Amber Bertin and archival assistant MarQuis Bullock. Together, we unwrapped, photographed, and reviewed each bundle in the crates to determine what each one contained. The bulk of the work involved assessing each item’s condition and preservation status: while most of these artifacts were in relatively good shape, many still bore signs of age (fading and discolored papers, rusting paperclips, degraded film reels, etc.). Most of the materials were written in French, leaving the specifics of their contents obscure to our English-speaking minds.
As we determined general descriptions for each item, we recorded everything into an inventory spreadsheet before sorting the materials into archival file folders and boxes. Once the boxes were full, we would transfer them onto the massive shelves within the ALF’s secure and temperature-controlled vault.
Much work remains to be done, and the BFC/A is already in the process of bringing aboard research fellows specializing in Francophone and African film history who will identify these materials more thoroughly. However, by initially inventorying the contents of this collection, we were able to house these treasures in conditions where they can remain accessible to interested researchers for hundreds of years. Particularly exciting is the collection’s hundreds of manuscripts, many of which have never been published or translated widely within the English-speaking world. We expect that further exploration of this collection will enrich our understandings of film history, Black filmmaking practices, and postcolonial cinemas. The collection has already attracted the interest of scholars from around the world. As it is further processed and studied by different eyes, I personally look forward to reading and hearing more about Mr. Vieyra in the years to come.
Dan Hassoun is an assistant archivist at the BFC/A. He earned his Ph.D in Communication & Culture from Indiana University and has instructed several courses on film and media theory, consumer culture, and globalization. He also works as a Crisis Intervention specialist with Middle Way House.
Screening TODAY THURSDAY Maori Holmes’s Curated Program from the 2019 BlackStar Film Festival || 3/12. 6:15PM. LI 048
This screening program from the 2019 BlackStar offers a series of cinematic love letters, short films that reclaim and retell the lives of individuals and communities with deep reverence and formal innovation.
Maori Holmes will be calling in for conversation following the screening.
Holmes is Founder and Artistic Director of the BlackStar Film Festival, based in Philadelphia.
PROGRAM
🎥 America, Garrett Bradley, 30, Short Doc, 2019
Rooted in New Orleans, this modern day silent film, challenges the idea of Black cinema as a “wave,” or “movement in time,” proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement. Inspired by Lime Kiln Field Day (1913), featuring Bert Williams.
🎥 Bereka, Nesanet Teshager Abegaze, 7 Experimental, 2019
A family history archive as told by matriarch Azalu Mekonnen and her granddaughter Samira Hooks. Shot on Super 8 in Los Angeles and Gondar, Bereka captures the Ethiopian coffee ceremony and explores migration, memory and rebirth. The film was hand-processed by Nesanet at the Echo Park Film Center.
🎥 Fainting Spells, Sky Hopinka, 11, Experimental, 2019
Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska – or the Indian Pipe Plant – used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.
🎥 A Love Song for Latasha, Sophia Nahli Allison, 19, Short Doc, 2019
A dreamlike archive in conversation with the past and the present to reimagine a more nuanced narrative of Latasha Harlins by excavating intimate and poetic memories shared by her cousin and best friend.
🎥 Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars, Charlotte Brathwaite, 9, Experimental, 2019
“The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. But I know, somehow only when it’s dark enough, can you see the stars.” –MLK, Jr. Two beings caught in a landscape of contrasting violence and beauty, where history and future collide, calling on the fantastical and the real.
🎥 T, Keisha Rae Witherspoon, 14, Short Narrative, 2019
A film crew follows three grieved participants of Miami’s annual T Ball, where folks assemble to model R.I.P. t-shirts and innovative costumes designed in honor of their dead.
BlackStar Founder & Artistic Director Maori Holmes Presents: Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars || 3/12. 6:15PM. LI 048
| America | Garrett Bradley | 30 | Short Doc |
| Bereka | Nesanet Teshager Abegaze | 7 | Experimental |
| Fainting Spells | Sky Hopinka | 11 | Experimental |
| Love Song for Latasha, A | Sophia Nahli Allison | 19 | Short Doc |
| Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars | Charlotte Brathwaite | 9 | Experimental |
| T | Keisha Rae Witherspoon | 14 | Short Narrative |
Maori Holmes is scheduled to be present via Zoom.
This screening program from the 2019 BlackStar offers a series of cinematic love letters, short films that reclaim and retell the lives of individuals and communities with deep reverence and formal innovation.
Maori Holmes will be calling in for conversation following the screening.
Holmes is founder and director of the BlackStar Film Festival. She has organized programs in film at a myriad of organizations including Anthology Film Archives, Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Lightbox Film Center, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), The Underground Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art—where she organized screening programs in conjunction with the 2019 Biennial. Holmes’s writing has appeared in Film Quarterly. Holmes is a 2019 Soros Equality Fellow.
Named after Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey’s shipping line, the BlackStar Film Festival has been nicknamed the “the black Sundance.” Founded by Holmes in 2012, BlackStar is now a major platform for the formally innovative work of Black, indigenous, and other independent filmmakers of color from around the world.
Holmes has organized programs in film at a myriad of organizations including Anthology Film Archives, Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Lightbox Film Center, Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), The Underground Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art—where she organized screening programs in conjunction with the 2019 Biennial. Holmes’s writing has appeared in Film Quarterly. Holmes is a 2019 Soros Equality Fellow.
Named after Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey’s shipping line, the BlackStar Film Festival has been nicknamed the “the black Sundance.” Founded by Holmes in 2012, BlackStar is now a major platform for the formally innovative work of Black, indigenous, and other independent filmmakers of color from around the world.
Our title comes from playwright Charlotte Brathwaite’s short film which is itself drawn from Martin Luther King, Jr. who once said, “The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. But I know, somehow only when it’s dark enough, can you see the stars.”
This screening program from the 2019 BlackStar offers a series of cinematic love letters, short films that reclaim and retell the lives of individuals and communities with deep reverence and formal innovation.
PROGRAM:
America, Garrett Bradley, 30, Short Doc, 2019
Rooted in New Orleans, AMERICA is a modern day silent film, challenging the idea of Black cinema as a “wave,” or “movement in time,” proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement.
Bereka, Nesanet Teshager Abegaze, 7 Experimental, 2019
Bereka is a family history archive as told by matriarch Azalu Mekonnen and her granddaughter Samira Hooks. Shot on Super 8 in Los Angeles and Gondar, Bereka captures the Ethiopian coffee ceremony and explores migration, memory and rebirth. The film was hand-processed by Nesanet at the Echo Park Film Center.
Fainting Spells, Sky Hopinka, 11, Experimental, 2019
Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska – or the Indian Pipe Plant – used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.
A Love Song for Latasha, Sophia Nahli Allison, 19, Short Doc, 2019
A Love Song For Latasha is a dreamlike archive in conversation with the past and the present to reimagine a more nuanced narrative of Latasha Harlins by excavating intimate and poetic memories shared by her cousin and best friend.
Only When It’s Dark Enough Can You See the Stars, Charlotte Brathwaite, 9, Experimental, 2019
“The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. But I know, somehow only when it’s dark enough, can you see the stars.” –MLK, Jr. Two beings caught in a landscape of contrasting violence and beauty, where history and future collide, calling on the fantastical and the real.
T, Keisha Rae Witherspoon, 14, Short Narrative, 2019
A film crew follows three grieved participants of Miami’s annual T Ball, where folks assemble to model R.I.P. t-shirts and innovative costumes designed in honor of their dead.
Thank you to the College Arts and Humanities Institute, the Media School and the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive.