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… Read more »
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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,… Read more »
ONCE HAUNTED: FILMS AND CONVERSATION, SEPT 14, 2019 at 7PM IU Cinema #DIRECTEDBYWOMEN
Once Haunted is a two-part series examining the idea of haunting, both as a multifaceted trope of desire, physical ruins, loss, fear and social change, as well as a citation from specific genres of horror and surrealism. Conversation will follow the screening. Curated by Sarah Lasley formerly of Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design… Read more »
See BORDERLINE, Starring Paul Robeson (1930) with a new score by composer Renée Baker.
The Black Film Center/Archive is excited to welcome back to Indiana University Renée Baker, who is scheduled to be present for a post-screening Q&A of the 1930 film Borderline on Wednesday April 24th at 7:00 pm. (Click HERE for tickets.) Baker, who recently visited Indiana University in 2017 to premier her score for a different film, The… Read more »
Together Un/Known
Together Un/Known Archival Ethics and the Case of Acquisition 6130 Anonymous home movie collections, while not entirely rare, present unique challenges for archives. In the case of Acquisition 6130 at the Academy Film Archive, archivists discovered what appeared to be home movies of a gay interracial couple living in Southern California in the early 1970s…. Read more »
Nontheatrical Ecologies: The Films of Esther Figueroa
The Black Film Center/Archive is proud to welcome Esther Figueroa, PhD, for a screening of her work Monday, March 25 at 6PM, hosted by the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive. Dr. Figueroa is an independent Jamaican filmmaker with over 30 years of experience in political documentary cinema. A self-taught activist filmmaker, her work focuses on… Read more »
Muenz Tweets Highlights from “Saving the Race”
Kristen Muenz, an archivist and recent graduate of the MLS program at Indiana University, captured key points from Dr. Melanie Chambliss’ presentation, “Saving the Race: Black Archives, Black Liberation, and the Shaping of African American History, which marked the final installment of the BFC/A’s Fall 2018 lecture and conversation series Before Representation. ________________________________________________________________ Highlights from “Saving… Read more »
Michael Schultz’s Sonic “Archives”
Former BFC/A Student Assistant Elijah Pouges is a writer, rapper and music producer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is often thinking about simulacrum and the interactions between sonics and image. You can find his music at brzraps.com. In this essay Pouges examines what it means to hear as well as see Michael Schultz’s films. The films… Read more »
The Extratextual(s) of The Last Dragon
Former BFC/A Student Assistant Elijah Pouges is now a writer, rapper and music producer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is often thinking about simulacrum and the interactions between sonics and image. You can find his music at brzraps.com. In this essay Pouges examines the many worlds contained extra-textually Michael Schultz’s films. The films discussed in this post are… Read more »
What was FOCUS: Black America, 1968?
This Wednesday October 24 at 6PM in the IULMIA Screening Room (Wells 048): the Black Film Center/Archive, the University Archives, the Neal-Marshall Black Cultural Center Library and IU Libraries Moving Image Archive will stage (RE)FOCUS: Black America 1968/2018. This interactive experience includes a screening of HERITAGE OF THE NEGRO 30 min. (1965), narrated by Ossie Davis… Read more »