Who will solve Black cinema’s marketing crisis?
… and other questions in my inbox on the 4th anniversary of Black Film Archive.
Tomorrow, the film series I co-curated at the Museum of Modern Art, “When the World Broke Open: Katrina and Its Afterlives,” in commemoration of Hurricane Katrina’s 20th anniversary opens. I hope to see you there. The series runs from August 27 to September 21. Learn more here.
Every August I look at the calendar and wonder how another anniversary for Black Film Archive has passed. Four years of shifting the conversation around Black cinema and digital preservation of that heritage. This moment would not be possible without you all. I remain so, so, so, so, so grateful.
What does it mean to make Black film history accessible? Four years ago today, I launched BlackFilmArchive.com after spending significant time pondering this question. In the years that have passed, I have spoken with artists–Black film and video makers, audiences, producers, distributors, directors, craftspeople, and the infinite others that make the Black film ecosystem possible–refining my answer to that question. Since Black Film Archive’s launch, I’ve been asked many variations of three essential root questions. I try my best to answer these root questions in their fullness below… but you can feel free to ask me anything in the comments. Thank you all.
There have been a slew of modern Black box office failures. Who (or what) will solve Black cinema’s (marketing) crisis?
When Black Film Archive originally launched in August 2021, it stopped in 1979 in concert with the fact that 1978’s The Wiz, the most expensive musical up until that point, was a commercial and critical failure. We arrive to this moment with two particular trends in Hollywood happening. Black-produced Blaxploitations, cheaply made but high grossing flicks, upend Hollywood’s expectations of what box office success looks like and Hollywood searches for a way to reproduce that success. The film that leads that charge, Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), becomes a hit after Melvin Van Peebles leads his own cinema-shifting marketing campaign–stating that the film was ‘rated X by an all white jury’ and independently marketing directly to Black neighborhoods. His instincts are mirrored by what cinema’s early Black pioneers, like Oscar Micheaux, did for their films– taking the film cans from city to city, marketing their films outside of expectations for what their films can be. But as The Wiz shows, Hollywood will take some lessons from what underground movements are doing to distribute films but not all. After they admit defeat with releasing The Wiz and Blaxploitations saved Hollywood from a certain demise, Tinsel Town decided they had enough financial backing to move on. But their divestment from Black cinema birthed the 80s and 90s wave of independent Black cinema that came after it.. That once again, shook the foundation of Hollywood’s core.
Often the Hollywood dream factory will take the reward for showcasing a moment, but not the work to deliver it fully. There will be ponderances like we release all of our other films like this… why do Black films need special work? With this context noted, my answer is simple: The ‘savior’ Black cinema is searching for is its own, Black media makers have always known how to release their films for the audience they’ve created them for; Hollywood–and its calculations of success outside of Black sensibilities– often takes the power from Black artists to do so. Spike– who carried the torch Melvin Van Peebles created, with his own one-man marketing machine that –got his start in cinema after “The Wiz” prevented investment in Black works. He made a way out of no way to help usher in a new path for Black video makers… history tells us that another independent film reckoning is on the horizon. The solution we are seeking is in our past.
Black audiences have always treated box office participation in Black media like a civic duty. A savvy distributor or studio would know that it's essential to tap into that impulse to make a film’s release successful by all measures…
And finally, the consolidation of release mediums means that returning to nontraditional models of financing and production are essential to the future of the field. Simply, the solution is preserving Black artist’s creative freedom by any means possible, to each person’s ability.
What is up with all the trauma in Black film/media?
When I am asked this question on a panel, as I often am, I point to Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Joy and Pain,” which states that joy and pain must co-exist to feel the other. Trauma, as it is often cornered into the catch all that has been applied to many facets of the Black experience, is psychological pain, works discussing slavery, or those who are down on their luck, et al.
Trauma in Black cinema–as has been widely discussed– often points to three works:
“Roots” –the widely beloved 1978 mini series that is the foundation of the mini-series as we know it today; the series was broken up into parts as a way to be buried after ABC did not believe in how the narrative was depicted; over 80% of the American public with a TV set in their home viewed the series live.
“12 Years a Slave” –-the 2013 film by Steve McQueen about Solomon Northorp’s odyssey as a free Black man who is sold into slavery and tries to reclaim his freedom. This work is often discussed with films released around the time like “Fruitivale Station.”
“The Color Purple” (1989) – an epic of Black women’s survival based on the book of the same name by Alice Walker. This film re-entered the conversation when the 2023 musical based on the same material was released.
When this chatter begins online it often is to the tune of how can I watch something beyond these types of films. Responding to this curiosity is what promoted Black Film Archive’s creation.1 But truthfully, depictions of ‘trauma’, as it rings in the minds of people, exist in Black life. Thinking about the three examples these conversations are tethered to: All three works brought new enlightenment to facets of Blackness: “Roots” ignited a generation’s passion for genealogy and understanding history; “The Color Purple” sparked cultural debate by the underdocumented history of Black women’s struggles and the need for visibility of our language and way; “12 Years A Slave” captured a moment in time to remind us that no avenue of Black life should be off limits (very few films focusing on slavery have ever been made contrary to popular belief.)
This conversation reminds me of Saidiya Hartman’s curiosities in “Scenes of Subjection:”2
“Are we witnesses who confirm the truth of what happened in the face of the world-destroying capacities of pain, the distortions of torture, the sheer unrepresentability of terror, and the repression of the dominant accounts? Or are we voyeurs fascinated with and repelled by exhibitions of terror and sufferance?”
Witnessing the truth and its Hollywood grandeur reminds us that freedom in film is framed through the eyes of those who have to work towards it, not in the master’s recounting of it. What is lost when we reduce the existence of pain as the totality of a cinematic experience? What happens when we are incurious about something that is deemed a negative expression? The terrors and the joys are interlinked. The presence of ‘trauma’ should not prevent us from engaging with art.
However, I find that often what people hope to say during this conversation is something to the tune of ‘How do we protect intracommunity knowledge and lived experiences in a world where white eyes are the decision-makers and gatekeepers?’ There is a consequential relationship between popularized images of Blackness and those who control its output; who is able to tell the story and what their intentionality is with the framing of images.
Aesthetic control of our image has been a foundational block of Black artistic creation since its genesis. An artistic curiosity that has sprung across time in response to the denial of Black humanity by white stereotypical mythmaking– the coon and its cousin myths– embedded into white cultural production at every level.By taking our image into our hands, Black artists suggest that controlling Black imagery is legacy work to render Black humanities and futures possible.
So, ultimately, I think the issue is not in and of itself trauma and negative images, I think it is commercial exploitation of white myths about Black life.
Why do we need sex on screen?
In 1955, Tan Magazine– a Johnson publication– asked “Will Hollywood Let Negroes Make Love?” in response to the Hollywood spectacle “Carmen Jones” (1954) that splashed across its cover.
James Baldwin, writes in his review of the film3, “Carmen Jones is one of the first and most explicit—and far and away the most self-conscious—weddings of sex and color which Hollywood has yet turned out.”
These two dynamics of conversation—explicit and implicit images of cinematic sex—continue to dominate our consciousness.
Sex is an expression of life. How it is displayed on screen shows you something about the character, setting, or circumstance. How people relate to each other in the height of passion—or lack there of— tells you as much as decoding the intricacies of setting and script. Passion is the point of life, sex is a display of that passion. Both implicit and explicit images of that belong on screen. After all, ‘Will Hollywood Let Negroes Make Love?’ The jury is still out.
Again, thank you all. And, please, ask me anything below (or in reply to this email.) Cheers!
