“Dimensions in Black: Perspectives on Black Film and Media”

A Special Film Quarterly Dossier, Vol. 71 No. 2, Perspectives on Black Cinema

Amphitheater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, December 5, 2017

This past spring, in the heady aftermath of the Oscar win for Barry Jenkins and Moonlight and the multiple nominations of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, FQ‘s Regina Longo and B. Ruby Rich held a meeting with Racquel Gates and Michael Boyce Gillespie in Chicago to hatch a plan for bringing together some of the best new voices for a special dossier on African American cinema, including and beyond Moonlight and I Am Not Your Negro.

These videos are a record of the December 5, 2017 public event held at the Film Society of Lincoln Center where Racquel Gates, Michael Boyce Gillespie, Rizvana Bradley, Paula J. Massood, Brandy Monk-Payton, Samantha N. Sheppard, Kristen J. Warner, and B. Ruby Rich take stock and extend the dialogue to consider the range of strategies and imaginaries that are analyzed in the dossier. This dossier is intended as an intervention into the understanding of the present moment in black representation, across platforms, and as a way to generate ideas, conversations, and—who knows—film and TV projects for the future.

Part 1 features the authors discussing their work with illustrative clips from the media texts they discuss in their individual articles.

 

Part 2 welcomes the audience into a public conversation moderated by FQ‘s B. Ruby Rich. 

 

Visit the Table of Contents for FQ 71.2 and read all the articles.

 

Download the program from this event.

 

 

Header Image: 11-year old Chris (Zailand Adams) watching TV in Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

 

Founded in 1969 the Film Society of Lincoln Center is devoted to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema, and endeavors to ensure that it will remain an accessible and essential art form for years to come. Film Quarterly, the oldest continuously published film journal in the United States, is dedicated to supporting diversity in scholarship with perspectives on film, television, and evolving media platforms. It is published by the University of California Press with major support from JustFilms, Creativity and Free Expression Program, Ford Foundation.

Special thanks to Maria Luisa Gambale and Regina Longo, Film Quarterly Associate Editor, for event conception and execution; Jean-Philippe Voiron for program design; Jeff Delauter, Eugene Hernandez, Dennis Lim, and Lesli Klainberg.