Season’s Greetings & Winter Break Hours
Season’s greetings to you and your families, from all of ours! Thank you for all of your love and support in 2022! We hope that you’ve had a great year and wish you the best into the new year, as well!
The Black Film Center & Archive will be closed to walk-in visitors and only open limited days and hours for scheduled appointments, during winter break. Please be sure to email us at bfca@IU.edu to schedule an appointment.
Visit from Prof. Colleen Ryan and Dr. Fred Kuwornu
We had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Fred Kuwornu, Italian-Ghanian Director, and Prof. Colleen Ryan, IU Department of French and Italian, and welcoming them to the Black Film Center & Archive. Dr. Kuwornu was in town for the screening of his film, Blaxploitalian: 100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema. Congratulations on all of your success and best wishes into the future.
Social Media Highlights
Dorothy Dandridge
On November 9th, we wished happy birthday to the legendary Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965)! Emerging as a singer on the nightclub circuit (both as a solo act and with her older sister Vivian), Dorothy began supplementing her income with small (often uncredited) roles in film productions and musical shorts starting in the late 1930s. Dandridge’s meteoric, if brief, rise to mainstream Hollywood stardom began when she was cast in the title role of 1954’s Carmen Jones and became the first Black performer nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
She would appear in several other high-profile roles (like 1957’s Island in the Sun and 1959’s Porgy and Bess), but her film career was hampered by financial difficulties, abusive men, and industry racism (Dandridge openly refused to accept many stereotypical and minor roles after her Oscar nomination). She found a wider range of roles overseas, including in the British crime drama Malaga (1960), and the French-Italian slave drama Tamango (1958) where she broke taboos against interracial kissing. One of the earliest Black stars to be widely marketed for her beauty and sexuality, Dandridge’s iconoclastic and diva-like persona has been rightly celebrated in the decades following her death for helping expand the range for acceptable Black female representation.
(Portrait of Dandridge from the Mary Perry Smith Collection; posters for Carmen Jones, Tamango, and Porgy and Bess from the Edward Mapp and Black Film Center & Archive’s General Collections)
Lisa Bonet
We wished a happy birthday to actor and fashion icon Lisa Bonet (born November 16, 1967). Most recognizable to TV audiences as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show (1984-1991) and its spin-off A Different World (1987-1989), Ms. Bonet bravely fought against typecasting and charted her own path in the industry beyond family-friendly roles as she aged. Provocative appearances in Rolling Stone and Interview magazines and a Saturn Award-nominated role in the horror thriller Angel Heart (1987) attracted considerable controversy at their time. In addition to other roles in Enemy of the State (1998) and High Fidelity (2000), Ms. Bonet has also directed music videos for Angel Haze, Cree Summer, and Lenny Kravitz. Her daughter Zoë Kravitz continues her legacies in film, television, and fashion.
(Portrait of Bonet from the Black Film Center & Archive’s General Collection)
Janelle Monáe
On December 1st, we wished a happy birthday to musician, actor, activist, and all-around Electric Lady Number One, Janelle Monáe (born 1985)! Blending R&B, pop, space rock, and other musical influences with an Afrofuturist bent, Monáe’s concept albums The ArchAndroid (2010), The Electric Lady (2013), and Dirty Computer (2018) have netted 8 Grammy nominations and considerable critical and popular acclaim. Since 2016, Monáe has expanded their talents to the silver screen, starring in Moonlight (2016), Hidden Figures (2016), Harriet (2019), Antebellum (2020), and the upcoming sequel to Knives Out. An outspoken social justice advocate, Monáe’s 2015 protest song “Say Her Name (Hell You Talmbout)” has been a frequent soundtrack to Black Lives Matter and racial justice movements, and was described by David Byrne as “one of the most moving political songs that I’d ever heard.”
(Hidden Figures poster part of the Black Film Center & Archive’s General Collection)
Bill Pickett
On December 5th, we wished happy birthday to rodeo star and early Black film cowboy Bill Pickett (1870-1932)! Raised in Texas by his formerly enslaved father Thomas, Bill Pickett built a national name as a rodeo stunt performer and inventor of a cattle-wrestling technique called bulldogging. This caught the interest of film producer Richard E. Norman, who hired Pickett to headline the all-Black westerns The Bull-Dogger (1921) and The Crimson Skull (1922). Unfortunately, no complete print remains of either film, but surviving film fragments and publicity materials testify to the legacy of Bill Pickett as one of cinema’s first Black cowboys.
(Photos from the Black Film Center & Archive’s Richard E. Norman Collection)
Eslanda Goode Robeson
On December 15, we wished a happy birthday to activist, scientist, writer, and actor Eslanda Goode Robeson (1895-1965)! The wife, initial business manager, and first biographer of the legendary Paul Robeson, “Essie” made her own career as a lifelong activist against racism, sexism, colonialism, and Cold War-era McCarthyism. After earning a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1946, Robeson published her book African Journey, which broke ground not only for its Black female perspective, but also its celebration of South and East African customs. In 1930, Robeson made a rare lead acting appearance alongside her husband in the independent silent feature Borderline, which dared to explore then-taboo topics of Black sexuality and interracial relationships.
(Screenshots of Eslanda in Borderline from the Black Film Center & Archive’s General Collection)
In Memoriam
Irene Cara
The Black Film Center & Archive celebrates the life and work of Irene Cara (1959-2022). One of the most iconic voices of the early 1980s, Ms. Cara’s performances of the title songs for Fame (1980) and Flashdance (1983) won two Academy Awards for Best Original Song. Prior to becoming an internationally-acclaimed musician, Ms. Cara’s place in Black film history was cemented by her starring roles in beloved ‘70s classics like Aaron Loves Angela (1975) and Sparkle (1976). Our condolences to her loved ones.
(Portrait and poster images of Irene Cara from the Black Film Center & Archive Collection.)
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