Six Highlights from the Black Film Archive


Next week, Black Film Archive – A living record of black cinema – will officially be six months old. But its roots go way back when its founder, Maya Cade, studied journalism at Howard University. There he was editor of the arts section of the student newspaper The Hilltop.

“As I explored my intimate definitions of Blackness, for the first time in this all-Black space, I was able to see possibility, not just a burden, in Blackness,” Cade said. “This has really shaped how I see movies, how much care I want to put into the Film Noir Archive.”

The archive, which currently contains around 200 pieces, currently showcases works made from 1915 to 1979 and can be published online. Cade, an audience development strategist at the Criterion Collection, has simultaneously received awards from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics for his work on the project.

We asked Cade to pick a favorite movie from various decades of the archive, which he framed as “Looking at Black fame through time.” These are edited excerpts from the speech.

King Vidor was an established, respected Hollywood director who set out to make a sound film depicting the Black religious experience. And FilmI think the film is important because it showcases the far-reaching skills of Black artists, and even though it builds on familiar stereotypes of Blackness, such as content worker, jezebel, people who are overly consumed by religion. She let Nina Mae McKinney create a prototype for what black women can be on screen.

This movie Black explores his religious experience. It is told through a series of fables to a Sunday school class. The film narrates the miraculous events in the Bible with vignettes. While the movie is full of clichés, I think the movie is relisted here because it’s a showcase of the talent of the standout actors who are all Black.

I think there’s something special that happens when black people watch movies, we can often capture what we see in our experience. And I think this movie is a good example of that. Even if we are uncomfortable with the overall message of the movie, we have the ability to hold on to and value what we think is salvageable.

I’m a huge fan of Zora Neale Hurston. Her name would almost be Zora. I think Zora Neale Hurston was known for her role-changing novels as a writer, but she had a lot of talent. Despite having more than two or three movies that are constantly discussed, I often revisit his widely available movies. And I think this movie was special because there aren’t many movies in this decade where Blacks are allowed to be insiders.

He’s a filmmaker, but he’s acting like an insider among the people he’s filming, and I think that’s pretty special. And in this short film, he observes the religious practices of the South Carolina Gullah people. And I think this short is a showcase of his most famous skill that we all know him for, which dares to see the fullness of Black life without translation.

I am very interested this movie too much. of this age Sydney PoitierI’m also thinking about “Earth, Flesh and Devil” as a movie that’s the era of the integrationist picture, but that also acts like a ‘Twilight Zone’ episode, and it’s a movie with Harry Belafonte at its center. post-apocalyptic, just a barren world. And in this world, he meets two other white people, and they are apparently the last people to exist.

And even if that’s true, Harry Belafonte has to navigate the predetermined racial and sexual politics of the day, which I think is really fascinating: If you think about what I call an integrative picture, that’s where you really feel. It’s an image of what black men can do in movies, it’s a different plot that interests me deeply, deeply.

according to me this movie is special because Sammy Davis Jr. has a dramatic role as a drunken trumpeter who gets into trouble with the racism, bad health and terrible temper he encounters during the performance. But I think the movie is very special to me because it showcases the struggle with the necessity of work as you try to formulate your own ideological freedom.

So if I’m thinking about a movie in the Civil Rights era, I think it’s a different way in that movie era. And I think Cicely Tyson is also great as the only person who believes in her despite her struggles. And there’s Ossie Davis and Louis Armstrong; this is really awesome.

Just I think “Claudine” to be an overall victory. Diahann Carroll is the main character, a mother of six and a housemaid trying to understand the world. And I think the movie is irresistible in the way it looks at what it means to love – whether it’s for yourself, your family, or budding romance in a world of impossible choices Black people face.

This movie truly represents the fullness of the archive: it has joy, it has pain, it has love, it has loss, it has heartache, it has challenges Blacks face. And it’s really special to me because it gives a glimpse of people without belittling the way they face these problems.



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