One of the most important figures in African film, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra is a name that deserves to be better known. After directing the first substantial film by a French-speaking sub-Saharan African, Afrique sur Seine, in 1955, Vieyra went on to become the first African admitted to study at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques… Read more »
With her mesmerizing debut feature Faya Dayi, Ethiopian-Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir returned to her hometown of Harar to document its rural Oromo community of farmers and the harvesting of the khat plant, the country’s most desired export. Photographed in swooning black and white, Beshir’s Oscar-shortlisted film is both a loving tribute to Ethiopia and a… Read more »
When we first find William Douglas Street Jr., he is newly married and thoroughly bored. There’s a drudgery to his life and he finds little enjoyment languishing in cars while his father installs burglar alarms. He also resents living at home with his family still, but he’s stuck with both the job and the domestic… Read more »
As one of the brightest stars of the 20th century, Josephine Baker wasn’t just a mesmerizing actor or a sublime dancer who could make beautifully goofy faces — she was, and still is, an iconic cultural figure whose powerful presence incurs questions of colonialism, Black womanhood, authorship, and much, much more. In her new book… Read more »
Julie Dash’s films frequently meditate on history. Daughters of the Dust (1991) brings us into the unique culture of a Gullah family on the precipice of change in a new century. Illusions (1982) imagines if a Black woman passing as a white woman had become a film executive in the Classical Hollywood era. The Rosa… Read more »
Even within the supposedly transgressive cinema of the 1970s, Bill Gunn (1934-1989) was relegated to the status of a marginalized figure. Gunn directed only three films: Stop (1970), which was never released; Ganja & Hess (1973), a vampire film which was retitled “Blood Couple” without Gunn’s approval and heavily recut by its distributors; and Personal… Read more »