All posts tagged: Black film and media

Webinar | Black Infinite: New Directions in Black Film and Media

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On June 1, 2023, Film Quarterly hosted a webinar analyzing the vitality of film and media as objects of black study. Given the historical momentum surrounding the study of black film and media today and FQ’s special dossier (Spring 2023), dossier editor Michael Boyce Gillespie and FQ editor B. Ruby Rich moderate a conversation that compels deeper inquiry into the stakes of this research. With dossier contributors Racquel Gates, Walton Muyumba, Julie Beth Napolin, and Yasmina Price, and respondent Samantha Sheppard.

Critical Perspectives on Black Women’s Filmmaking

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On March 4, 2023, Film Quarterly sponsored the scholar response roundtable for the 2023 Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts (University of Chicago).

Participants: Courtney R. Baker, Terri Francis, Racquel Gates, Michael Gillespie, Hayley O’Malley, Miriam Petty, Yasmina Price, Samantha N. Sheppard, and Allyson Nadia Field (moderator)

An Introduction

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The work of this dossier is grounded in a devotion to the study of black film and media. In total, it represents the emergence of new frequencies, priorities, and methodologies attuned to the continued evolution of the field, which, in the last twenty years, has seen the most sustained and rigorous proliferation of scholarship ever.

Tearing, Stitching, Quilting: The Abolition Poetics of Garrett Bradley

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A young black woman dressed to signal a 1920s time frame walks along an empty country road, holding an umbrella. She stops in front of a white man sitting beneath a large tree, slowly kneels in front of him, and removes her hat. We see a close-up of his hand before shifting to hers. She begins ripping his white robe, a garment unambiguously suggestive of a Ku Klux Klan costume.

Pressure Drop: A “Small Axe” Introduction

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Steve McQueen’s anthology film series “Small Axe” (2020) enacts a visual historiography of West Indian life in London from the Windrush generation of the 1960s through the early 1980s. 1 Across Mangrove; Lover’s Rock; Red, White and Blue; Alex Wheatle; and Education, the series devises this history with distinct formats (film and digital, 16 mm and 35 mm), postproduction processes, and aspect ratios.

From the Archives: Black Media Matters

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On May 13, 2021, the city of Philadelphia for the first time commemorated the 1985 bombing of the M.O.V.E. headquarters and the Philadelphia neighborhood that surrounded it. Film Quarterly marked the 30th anniversary of that event in 2015 with Karen Redrobe’s analysis of Louis Massiah’s landmark film on that tragedy, including the contribution of Toni Cade Bambara to the film and its research.

PAGE VIEWS LIVE: A Conversation with Samantha N. Sheppard

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On September 25th, Film Quarterly launched PAGE VIEWS LIVE, its new webinar series showcasing the best in recent film and media studies publications. The series kicked off with a conversation between Page Views editor Bruno Guaraná and Samantha N. Sheppard about her highly anticipated new book, Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen.

Sporting Blackness: A Conversation with Samantha Sheppard

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A Black man wearing a noose around his neck, filmed from a low angle. This brief, cryptic shot opens Haile Gerima’s short film Hour Glass (1971). A cut, and the character is reintroduced as a college basketball player, first at practice, then in a game, surrounded by other Black athletes. They work the ball while, as Umar Bin Hassan—member of the legendary Harlem collective the Last Poets—recites on the soundtrack, “The white man is cuttin’ off their balls.” Glancing toward the white spectators in the bleachers, the ballplayer seems to experience an epiphany, comprehending his objectification and commodification as an athlete.

Thinking about Watchmen: A Roundtable

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Michael Boyce Gillespie leads a roundtable with scholars Jonathan W. Gray, Rebecca A. Wanzo, and Kristen Warner to discuss issues of medium, genre, fandom, and African American history in the highly regarded HBO series Watchmen. Characterizing the HBO series as a disobedient adaptation that modifies, extends, and redirects the world making of its source material, the famed twelve-issue comic-book series of the same name, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, Gillespie et al. explore the ways in which Watchmen remediates American history, starting with the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 that serves as the historical and ideological trigger that sets the series in motion. In a wide-ranging conversation that encompasses subjects including fan fiction, adaptation, cultural mythology, and black superheroes, the authors argue for Watchmen’s significance as some of the most consequential television of the century so far.