Fertile Beginnings: History, Politics, Representation

Joanne Grant (1930-2005), was formerly a young radical journalist for The National Guardian who had earlier in her career been an assistant to W.E. B. Du Bois, was an active member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and close associate of Ella Baker. Grant created the documentary Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker. Not only was the film an historical benchmark, it was a needed portrait of a revolutionary freedom fighter who worked tirelessly with others toward the goal of collective action for equal rights for all people.⁶

Ella Baker had a profound influence on several generations of social justice activists. Born in the early part of the 20^th century, Baker’s inheritance from her family was a deep sense of racial pride, a defiant spirit of resisting any form of oppression, and an abiding sense of community caretaking and cooperation, drawing others along in the continuing fight for equality. In the 1940s she was the field organizer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, traveling throughout the South six months of the year organizing membership drives and working with communities to help them recognize their potential for collective action. Ella Baker understood well the customs, traditions, and mores of Black people, absorbed from formerly enslaved grandparents who passed on a history of principled survival from the tortuous regimens of bondage, with their dignity and fighting spirit intact.

Ella Baker moved to New York right before the Depression and became involved in radical organizations there, notably, In Friendship, an organization she helped found along with Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison. In Friendship provided economic support to Black people in the South who faced financial hardships because of their political activism and attempts to register to vote.

Significantly, Ella Baker and In Friendship founded the Southern-wide organization the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The members of In Friendship felt it was imperative to continue the success of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and its driving impetus among Black people for racial justice.⁷

Ella Baker was the guiding force behind the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the organization that became the inspiration for other activist groups in the 1960s, such as the Students for a Democratic Society and emerging latter-day women’s right organizations. Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker skillfully blends archival footage of Baker’s life promoting participatory democracy—group-centered leadership—and interactions with those who heeded her call for living and working in the communities where movement activities, such as voter registration drives and literacy classes were taking place. One person who heroically and continually heeded Baker’s call was Bob Moses (1935-2021). Moses categorized Ella Baker as the embodiment of “Fundi,” a designation of honor originating from Swahili that refers to someone in a community who masters a craft, then passes on what they have learned by sharing it with others. ⁸

Fundi was the first film I saw that was directed by a Black woman and I have since shown it numerous times in my courses on Black Women Filmmakers. In conversation with Grant, she revealed to me that the documentary about Ella Baker needed to be done for Baker (1903-1986) was in her later years at the time of production; Grant took on the task herself in the absence of someone available to direct the film. Grant served as director, producer and even narrator and her young son appeared in a poignant scene in conversation with Ella Baker at a dinner party. ⁹

Necessity and getting the job done were also incentives for veteran film editor Lillian Benson to direct the documentary honoring those Black firefighters who sacrificed their lives in service of this country. “All Our Sons-Fallen Heroes of 9/11” began with a phone call, stated Benson on her involvement directing the film about the twelve Black firefighters who died during the tumult of the attack on the World Trade Center September 11, 2001. As a group their mothers and relatives felt the men’s bravery was being ignored. The mothers agonized that no one was interested in their story and they needed someone who could help them memorialize their sons. One the grief counselors, who was also a Black firefighter, contacted Lillian Benson.¹⁰

Lillian Benson is the first Black female invited to join the international society of film editors, American Cinema Editors (A.C.E.). Benson also serves on the ACE Board of Directors and has sponsored other Black women and women of color into the historically restrictive editing organization. Lillian Benson’s invitation followed closely on her nomination for a 1991 television Emmy Award for the Jacqueline Shearer directed “The Promised Land,” chronicling the last year in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. for Eyes on the Prize II. Lillian Benson was also the editor for Jacqueline Shearer’s PBS American Experience The Massachusetts 54^th Colored Infantry (1991).

All Our Sons-Fallen Heroes of 9/11 (2004) is a Lillian Benson tutorial of production and postproduction of creating an emotionally moving portrait of mothers lovingly offering up stories of the lives of their sons who died heroically on 9/11. The production crew numbered 4 people: director, producer, writer, and cinematographer, all of whom (and other contributors) donated their services. The composer and choirmaster worked with a live choir for the music of traditional Negro spirituals and hymns to appropriately synthesize the historical moment: “Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all our sons away…” Actor Alfre Woodard narrates the documentary and the mothers and relatives present the lives of the firefighters in a way that makes them come alive for the viewer. As much as the documentary could have been overwhelming, the impressive composure of the mothers earns plaudits for their desire: “they wanted the world to know their sons.” ¹¹

I have taught the course Black Women Filmmakers at 3 universities: the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and currently in the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I taught it for the first time at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1992 and had the unique honor of having Angela Davis present for the class during a screening of the film A Place of Rage (1991), directed by Pratibha Parmar. At the time, Angela was Professor of History of Consciousness and I was a visiting Professor in the department. A Place of Rage is a dynamic film. Parmar stated her goal in the making of the film was to reclaim the legacy of Black women’s contributions in the far-reaching struggles and triumphs of historical civil rights movements.¹² The women portrayed include long-term political worker Angela Davis and poet and social critic June Jordan (1936-2002). At the time of her death Jordan was Professor of African – American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and the author/editor of twenty-eight books, essays, and novels for children. Jordan had also written the libretto for the 1995 opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. June Jordan was widely acclaimed for her cogent essays and speeches on behalf poor people, the disenfranchised, and those without a public voice, and as someone who could be counted on to fight against injustice wherever it might occur.

In 1969, as a young female teaching at a major research university, Angela Davis entered into the public consciousness. Davis was a faculty member in the Philosophy Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. Davis was also completing the Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, writing her dissertation under the direction of Marxist professor Herbert Marcuse. Davis had grown up in the segregated South in Birmingham, Alabama and later studied with Marcuse at Brandeis University. Davis then traveled to Europe to study with the other leading philosophers in Germany, including Theodor Adorno, and returned to the United States to complete her Ph.D. at UCSD. While at UCSD Davis worked with others to form the organization Lumumba-Zapata College at the university, named for the assassinated Congolese revolutionary Patrice Lumumba and the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. Davis also became a member of the Che-Lumumba Club, the Black component, or “Cell” of the Communist Party, U.S.A. Che Guevara was a hero of the Cuban Revolution. While a faculty at UCLA, Davis was a founding member of Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. The Soledad Brothers were three Black men, including George Jackson, who were active in fighting for prisoners’ rights and had been accused of killing a guard at Soledad prison, located in Soledad, California, in January 1970.

The Regents of the University of California—the governing body of the then nine campus statewide system—voted to terminate Davis from her position in the Philosophy Department at UCLA, the stated reason given was Davis’ membership in the Communist Party, U.S.A. Davis and her lawyers filed an injunction that prohibited the Regents from firing her for political reasons. However, despite the court injunction, the Regents voted not to re-hire Davis for the coming year. All of these actions were played out in the national headlines.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, the 17-year-old brother of George Jackson, entered a Marin County, California courtroom, heavily armed with guns that were legally registered to Angela Davis, and took over the courtroom. Jonathan armed three Black men in the courtroom. The four Black men left the courtroom with five white hostages: the judge, the prosecutor, and three female jurors. San Quentin guards fired on the van containing the four Black men and the hostages, which was stopped at a roadblock. Three of the Black men, including Jonathan Jackson were killed in the gunfire from the guards, along with the judge Harold Haley.

Because some of the guns used by Jonathan Jackson were registered to Angela Davis, she was charged with murder, conspiracy, and kidnapping. When Davis learned of the shootout, fearing for her life, she fled the state and became one of the first females placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. Davis eluded capture for two months, subsequently spent a total of 16 months in prison, endured three months of trial by jury, and on June 4, 1972 was acquitted of all charges. Currently, Angela Davis continues her activism for prison reform and social justice for all people. ¹³

At the beginning of A Place of Rage June Jordan speaks emphatically of the revolutionary changes brought about through Black people’s freedom struggles: “Things have changed absolutely in my lifetime. And they changed because we made them change.” Clear evidence of the force of group actions reverberates when Angela Davis recalls her imprisonment and the organized efforts of people on her behalf and against political repression: “As I look back on that era, the historical significance of my case was that people took the organizing seriously; got together, built committees all over the country, all over the world; sent letters and telegrams and petitions to presidents and governors and judges. In the final analysis, there was nothing the government could do to counter that force. And that was why I was set free.” ¹⁴

The reclamation of Black women’s organized efforts toward justice appeared in film earlier in Madeline Anderson’s I Am Somebody (1970). Anderson’s documentary records the successful 113-day strike by Black female hospital workers in 1968 in Charleston, South Carolina. The film details the dehumanizing conditions with which the women worked and followed how the strikers remained steadfast even when confronted by twelve hundred armed state troopers and the South Carolina National Guard. Because the women refused to back down, the hospital administrators eventually compromised to settle the strike. The compromise did not net the strikers all they wanted (the formation of what eventually became local 1199B of the national union of hospital workers) but striking workers were reinstated and small wage increases were gained, along with the establishment of a credit union from which union dues were collected. During a press conference at the end of the strike one of the women was questioned by a white reporter who appeared puzzled that the gains were so small in comparison to the enormity of the battle waged. The Black female striker replied with dignity what she felt the strike had accomplished: “We won recognition as human beings, for one. We won recognition as human beings.” ¹⁵

Ella Baker believed that progressive social change was best achieved when those involved in social movement organizations were empowered to act on their own behalf if they participated in the decision-making process. Baker cautioned repeatedly against continual reliance on the “charismatic leader.” There is the danger, Baker felt, for the person characterized as the leader to begin to believe that that person is the movement itself and to rely only on mobilizing for specific instances rather than organizing for long-term political action. The political privileging of the grassroots members of an organization rather the authoritarian head helped to develop capabilities within individuals that would enhance their ability to act toward justice and the recognition of their value as human beings. ¹⁶

Playwright Lorraine Hansberry figures prominently in documenting Black women’s organized actions against repressive circumstances. Hansberry was author of the 1959 Broadway play A Raisin in the Sun which was made into a film in 1961, is a staple of television and revivals and appeared on Broadway again in 2004, starring Sean Coombs, Phylicia Rashad and Sanaa Lathan. Hansberry was nurtured into a radical tradition by her family’s association with W.E.B. Du Bois, who visited her Chicago home regularly and who was advisor to future African revolutionaries Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah, the future President of Ghana. In addition, Hansberry’s uncle was the respected scholar of African antiquity William Leo Hansberry. Hansberry was born in Chicago in 1930, went to college for 2 years at the University of Wisconsin, engaging with others in radical politics and campaigning for Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party. She left Wisconsin for New York, continued her involvement with radical movement workers, writing as a reporter for the Harlem-based leftist newspaper Freedom, begun by noted artist/singer and political actor Paul Robeson, edited by well-respected journalist Louis Burnham. ¹⁷

A long-overdue documentary by Tracy Heather Strain Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart (2017) chronicles Lorraine Hansberry’s life and activism. From I Am Somebody to Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, two documentaries by Black female filmmakers offer testimony to Black women’s unfailing power to enact change. What Anderson presented in her documentary and what Strain chronicled in her Hansberry film, Black women have worked strenuously to resist systems of oppression. An early example is given in Hansberry’s Freedom reporting: more than seventy years ago 132 Black women converged on Washington, D.C. The 1951 march on Washington was called “the Sojourn for Truth and Justice” and had been organized for a redress of grievances against Black people, especially Black men. The women were supported emotionally and financially by numerous other Black women around the country who either could not make it to the demonstration in time or were otherwise detained as political prisoners in the South.

A report of the march was reported by Lorraine Hansberry in Freedom. As chronicled by Hansberry, among the protests were those presented by a Black woman whose son had just returned from “the senseless war in Korea” and whose nephew had also returned but “in a box.” This same woman had her passport taken away by the United States government because she had attended a peace meet in Poland. There was another woman in attendance whose son had been shot by a policeman while he lay on the operating table in the emergency room as doctors were attempting to treat him. Another was there because her husband and six other Black men had been, as she put it, “legally lynched” in Virginia.

As the women were meeting prior to their planned visits with government officials, the chair of the meeting addressed the women with these words: “Negro women, dry your tears and speak your mind. We have a job to do!” And for three days, 132 Black women set about accomplishing their task. ¹⁸

A memorable convergence emerges with Strain’s documentary on Lorraine Hansberry and LisaGay Hamilton’s portrait of actor Beah Richards: both are Peabody Award-winning films and both focus on remarkable social justice activists whose creative lives were accompanied by their goals of justice for Black people.

Hamilton’s documentary Beah: A Black Woman Speaks (2003) evolved from her appearance with Richards in the 1998 film adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987). Hamilton impressively performed the role of the young Sethe, offering viewers the emotion and determination of Toni Morrison’s character who after learning what the term “characteristics” means, kills her child rather than return her to enslavement, putting her someplace where she would be safe: “And no, nobody on this earth, would list her daughter’s characteristics on the animal side of the paper. No, oh no. Maybe Baby Suggs could worry about it, live with the likelihood of it; Sethe had refused—and refused still.”¹⁹ There is a long march from Madeline Anderson’s documentary of striking Black women hospital workers who fought to be recognized as “human beings” and Hamilton and Richards’ moving depiction of Morrison’s embodiment of humans refusing to be categorized as something less than that.

In Hamilton’s chronicle of the life of Beah Richards we learn that Richards, along with longtime radical left activist Louise Thompson Patterson, started the organization Black Women Sojourners for Truth and Justice, who undertook the 1951 march on Washington, D.C. The inspiration for the organization came from the poem “A Black Women Speaks…Of White Womanhood, Of White Supremacy, Of Peace” delivered by Beulah Richardson (Beah Richards) at the Peace Conference in Chicago in 1951.

At the time of Richards’ presentation radical left activists led by William and Louise Patterson and Paul Robeson, among others, were mounting nationwide campaigns against lynching of Black men. At one point Richards met Rosalie McGee who was part of the campaign, fighting especially to save the life of her husband Willie McGee. Richards was intrigued by the campaign and the meeting with Rosalie McGee and, as she said, “thought to do something with my poetry…I had written a poem that came right out of that meeting with Rosalie McGee.” Richards’ poem led to formation of the Black female organization Sojourners for Truth and Justice and the 1951 march on Washington. ²⁰

Beah Richards continued her commitment to radical activism even as more film roles became available to her. She appeared in the Broadway play and film The Miracle Worker (1959), Hurry Sundown (1967) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967). She served as an understudy to Claudia McNeil on the Broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun and again with the touring company of the play.

Even as she rose to prominence in film, Richards maintained her close connection to the radical activities undertaken by her leftist colleagues: “I would die for those people. They fought for me to say I’m a human being.” For Richards, in spite of the negative consequences of her participation in the political rallies, fund raisers and concerts, and a 100 page FBI file, she emphatically declared “communism did not scare me; fascism scared me because I lived under it every day in Mississippi (where she grew up).” ²¹

Beah Richards was an integral component of Black women’s radical tradition that continued through the 1950s and the 1960s and merged with others in the 1970 campaign to Free Angela Davis, after Davis’ imprisonment on false charges of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. Davis was a member of that tradition herself and her first lecture as a faculty member at UCLA included Richards’ poem “A Black Woman Speaks.” ²²

For veteran political activist Ella Baker, the imprisonment of Angela Davis “had a concrete and symbolic significance.” In Baker’s view, Angela Davis possessed “strength and moral courage” and a spirit of resistance that must be fought for: “we have rights only as long as we are willing to struggle for them.” ²³

A Tradition of Artistry as Activism

Struggle, political engagement, self-determination can be effectively translated in cultural forms. During periods of intense movements for social change, images, representation, art can help shape political consciousness.

Black women have long used their artistry to survive oppressive conditions, beginning with the rigors of enslavement. The women used the tools available to them, functional objects, utilitarian means and whatever was left over to create beauty. The essence of enslaved Black women’s activism is transmitted in their artifacts, such as quilts and food customs. ²⁴

For many Black women during enslavement their labor on serviceable and practical objects, guaranteed through force, also served social and historic ends. Quilting was, according to Gladys-Marie Fry, a respected scholar of quilts constructed by slave women, a means for the women to gain emotional stability and spiritual sustenance. In addition, their work fortuitously recorded a history for later use that was revealed through designs, stitching, colors and fabrics. The women told of their state of mind during difficult periods, their family lineage, and the rigors of life in bondage, among other particulars.²⁵ Fry declares: “slave women cast long shadows…they also remind us that the human mind, spirit, and talent can transcend the cruelest form of human degradation—slavery. Although slavery denied these women their physical freedom, it did not diminish their creative talent and artistic genius.”²⁶ Quilts are visible manifestations linking Black women’s cultural past to the present. Throughout generations a sense of continuity is maintained as the insurgent spirit and creative traditions established during enslavement are passed on to other Black women.

Ceremonies around food have long been significant in Black people’s lives. Even food choices have attained an historical and political dimension. During enslavement Black people survived on the scraps and discards of the plantation economic system. Heritage foods such as pigs’ feet, intestines, jowls, and ribs, evolved from enslaved people using skill and creativity to produce sufficient nourishment to endure physically damaging circumstances. Recent foodways studies probing the culture of food confirm that more than simply peripheral to women’s lives, it is a source of information about how they contributed to cultural life. For Black women, particularly as it relates to culture and the development of political consciousness, Foodways scholar Mary Douglas contends: “Food choices,” she writes, “support political alignments and social opportunities.” It is on the cultural terrain that social groups make sense of their socioeconomic location and begin to understand their capacity to resist subordinate status.²⁷

Documentation concerning the importance of cultural transmission from enslaved Black women passed throughout generations of Black resistance is present in The Black Family Dinner Quilt Cookbook (1993), which was designed as fundraiser for the National Council of Negro Women and their National Center for African American Women. The cookbook is also a tribute to the Council’s president, Dr. Dorothy I. Height, protegee of Mary McLeod Bethune, formerly enslaved, later founder of the organization. Dr. Bethune was a civil rights leader and U.S. Cabinet member during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.²⁸

Director Julie Dash ingeniously presents Black women’s creative cultural history in arresting sequences in Daughters of the Dust (1991), the first film directed by a Black female to be placed in theatrical distribution. Dash’s cinematic portrait depicts the Peazant family gathering for a ceremonial feast commemorating their last day on the island Ibo Landing, located off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina. Set during the turn of the twentieth-century, the film portrays the lives of four generations of Black people who have lived through enslavement yet have retained memories, customs, and traditions of their African homeland.

One scene showcases a quilt spread on the ground used as covering for a dinner featuring a diverse combination of foods invoking both Black people’s African heritage and means of survival while enslaved: gumbo, greens, cornbread, shrimp, rice, and corn. Hand-woven furniture encompasses the women who are dressed in flowing garments artfully stitched,, embroidered and sewn by them, while the women are adorned with distinctive hairstyles. Subtly, yet tellingly, Julie Dash honors the cultural legacy of Black women.

Black women have been engaged in these efforts through film since the early part of the twentieth century. Traveling evangelist Eloyce Gist created two known folk dramas, Hellbound Train and Verdict Not Guilty, in the 1920s. During this same period Madam C.J. Walker created visual records of Black women’s work history. Walker developed her retail business around manufacturing and distributing hair-care products and cosmetics for Black women, becoming one of the first Black millionaires. As part of her enterprise, Walker oversaw the production of training and promotional films about her cosmetics factory. She also owned the Walker Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana, which she opened after being charged a higher price at another local theater because of her race.

Novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston produced ethnographic documentaries in the 1930s. Hurston was trained as an anthropologist, earning an MA in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University, working with the noted anthropologist Franz Boas. Dr. Eslanda Goode Robeson, another anthropologist also shot ethnographic films in the 1940s.

Among those early Black women filmmakers for whom documentation exists of their contributions, two others have received recognition: Madame E. Touissant, the personal photographer to Booker T. Washington, produced at least one film about Black soldiers who fought in World War I and Alice B. Russell, worked closely and productively on films produced by Oscar Micheaux, one of the earliest directors of feature films.

Over time Black women filmmakers have employed a variety of forms to engage with specific viewers. Dramatic feature narratives extended the ability of filmmakers to connect with the familiar experiences of theatre-going audiences. Experienced filmmaker Kathleen Collins, with her two feature narratives, The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy (1980) and Losing Ground (1982), consciously designed her films for popular consumption. Collins understood that the effective use of cinema had the potential to evoke in the viewer a certain depth of response, similar to that experienced with other art forms. Collins was concerned with utilizing the grammar of film to resolve the structural and formal questions unique to film as a medium. For filmmakers separate from the professional film industry especially, tackling issues of structure was necessary if audiences were to gain an appreciation of cinema as more than a commercial vehicle.²⁹

Collins embraced the principle that cinema, like literature, has a language. She strove to amplify the potential of the medium. Collins was trained in France in the mid-1960s, and then earned an MA in film theory and production from the Mulberry Graduate School. Collins was greatly influenced by French director Eric Rohmer (My Night at Maud’s 1969) and worked closely with unorthodox Black film actor/director Bill Gunn (Ganja and Hess 1973), actor Seret Scott, and her former student/later cinematographer Ronald Gray. Collins taught at the City College of New York and is considered by many filmmakers the finest film editor of her era. She learned her craft by working with John Carter, one of the first Black union film editors. Collins worked as an editor from 1967 to 1974 at WNET-NY.

Contemporary Black women filmmakers who have taken up the mantle of examining pressing social issues in dramatic form include two with films that are especially significant today: Neema Barnette Civil Brand (2002), and Chinonye Chukwu Clemency (2019).

I have shown Neema Barnette’s film Civil Brand from the beginning of its existence. Students are instantly drawn into the world of women in prison, especially the visible evidence that the majority of imprisoned women are predominately women of color. More and more, the reality of the world of Civil Brand touches so many lives. Barnette’s film exposes the phenomenal growth of prisons and the accompanying presence of private industries reaping enormous profits from the increasing incarceration of American citizens.³⁰

With Civil Brand Neema Barnette continues a tradition of Black female artists producing politically potent cultural works that are “representational reparations”³¹ for longstanding misrepresentations of the lives of Black people. In the process of cultural opposition, Barnette’s film delivers a searing examination of the prison industrial complex that so many are actively working against presently. That so many people’s lives are affected by the U.S. culture of criminalization is seen in the many families who become the “collateral damage” of those imprisoned, experiencing restricted rights, police surveillance, marginalization in employment and living conditions, and other forms of repression.

Civil Brand harkens back to work of political activist Ida B. Wells, who worked so valiantly against the violent treatment of Black people in the form of lynching, and who witnessed and opposed the legalized enslavement of Black people through what was characterized as “lend-lease.” After the American Civil War, former Southern plantation owners needed assistance rebuilding their properties. Policies and laws were crafted by Southern lawmakers to entrap homeless and hungry formerly enslaved Black people. The result redounded to the gain of white Southerners because it was cheaper to work the lend-lease worker to death rather than as in the past, maintain their human “property.” They simply leased another person. Working against lynching, Ida B. Wells was as energetic against the violation of lend-lease.³²

Chinonye Chukwu’s dramatic film is the moment where art and activism come together in a compelling testament to a matter of historic political importance. For the film Clemency, Chukwu was awarded the 2019 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic Entry, a first for a Black female filmmaker for the highest honor. Chukwu wrote and directed Clemency. Alfre Woodard stars with a performance that is compelling, wrenching, and brilliant as a warden at a maximum-security prison who oversees death penalty executions.

Woodard and Chukwu met while they were both working on a successful clemency appeal of a death row inmate wrongfully convicted of murder and eventually released after 23 years incarcerated. Chukwu spent 6 years of intensive research. She and Woodard undertook extensive visits to 5 prisons in Ohio. Woodard talked to 6 wardens and a director of prisons, all of whom were female. The women, she said, saw their responsibility as providing the condemned as much dignity as possible.³³

Chukwu and Woodard made the film with a definite purpose: citizens needed to understand when they allow a government to engage in state sponsored killings, as Woodard explained, to engage in “ritualistic murder,” they must confront and not turn away from the reality of death. Clemency is chilling, excruciating, performed with understated power by Woodard. The film pushed all the emotions of those watching people intimately involved in human destruction: “We want all those with a stake in the death row business to see this film.” Going further Woodard muses on her first desire to be an artist with a purpose: film “can change the world.” ³⁴

Independent Film Conference: Steps Toward the Future

For three days over the summer of 1992, twenty-nine Black professionals from distribution, exhibition, acquisitions, and related fields, attended a conference to develop strategies for expansion of Black independent media in non-theatrical distribution. It was an optimistic and productive work-session, generating ideas that were developed and maintained in the Conference Report: Available Visions: Improving Distribution of African American Independent Film and Video Conference. ³⁵

The Conference offered, quite literally, a memorable portrait of an emerging, fertile independent film and video future. In the middle of the Conference report there is a photograph of the conference attendees with an accompanying grid identifying those shown. I was there presenting a paper “Profile of the Black Film Audience,”³⁶ following up a paper I published in the journal Black American Literature Forum “‘The Subject is Money’: Reconsidering the Black Film Audience as a Theoretical Paradigm.” In both analyses I was seeking to establish there was an economically viable film and video audience available for independent makers. ³⁷

For Black independent makers, writers, artistic directors, curators, and distributors, the photo evokes nostalgia because of the presence of film pioneers no longer with us, among whom are Jacquie Jones, William Greaves, Michelle Materre, Pearl Bowser, and Jacqueline Shearer.

For film critics and scholars, Jacquie (1965-2008) is especially remembered for her early, courageous reprimand of Black male directors, who finally given a chance at commercial film production, presented limited and demeaning depictions of Black women. In two widely read articles “The New Ghetto Aesthetic” and “The Accusatory Space,” Jacquie underlined the urgent need for images emanating from Black female perspectives. At the time of the conference, Jacquie was editor of Black Film Review, an auspicious and revered publication containing histories and analysis of Black films and makers. Jacquie later became head of the National Black Programming Consortium (now known as Black Public Media), founded New Media Institute, earned two Peabody Awards, and was Executive Producer of Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. ³⁸

Prolific filmmaker and documentary director William Greaves (1926-2014) is seen standing tall in the third row of the photograph. One of 2 filmmakers with PBS American Experience documentaries, Bill had recently aired his brilliant production of Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989). Not only is the film a sorely needed entre into the life of the courageous journalist, crusader against lynching, founder of the first Black female suffrage league, and tireless radical for rights of Black people, Ida B. Wells was there with those who were creating the leading civil rights organizations fighting against injustice. Wells' belief in agitation, activism, and protest branded her as a “dangerous radical” by the United States Secret Service, but emphasized her passionate directions for advancing Black people: the right to vote, anti-lynching laws, equal distribution of funds for education, work against the convict lease system, and Jim Crow laws. All of this is heroically preserved in Greaves’ documentary and highlighted by the on-camera presence of future Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison reading Wells’ autobiography, Crusade for Justice.

I first met Michelle Materre (1954-2022) in December 1991 and she proved to be a godsend for my research on Daughters of the Dust (1991). I was a participant at the Black Popular Culture Conference in New York and decided to take advantage of the time there to preview Black women’s films at Women Make Movies. I was, of course, impressed beyond measure with my first viewing of A Place of Rage and grateful to add to my store of knowledge about Black female filmmakers. Fortuitously, Michelle, who worked there at the time, and later a longtime WMM Board member, approached me about having a look at the videotape copy of Daughters of the Dust. I was, quite simply, astounded with the sheer power of Julie Dash’s film. I was aware of Dash and had seen many of her films, Four Women (1975), Diary of an African Nun (1977), Illusions (1982), and Praise House (1991).

From Michelle I obtained a videotape copy of Julie’s film to show to groups of Black women I was interviewing for my upcoming book Black Women as Cultural Readers (1995). The women in my research groups were transfixed by the film and offered insightful observations about the film itself and about its presence as being made by a Black female filmmaker. When I showed the film to one of the first groups, I was unnerved by the complete silence that followed the viewing of the film. After a bit, out of the silence, one of the women declared, “That’s the most beautiful movie I have ever seen.” ³⁹

The reactions of the women in my research groups were drastically different from the earliest reviews of Daughters of the Dust for the women displayed a patience with the leisurely unfolding of the film and a comprehension of the historical elements of the film. These women’s observations corresponded with many other Black female viewers responses as the film slowly made its way to its limited theatrical showings around the country.

The enormous success of Daughters of the Dust can be, in large part, attributed to the innovative and successful marketing plan of Michelle Materre and the newly formed Black public relations firm KJM3—Michelle, Kathryn Bowser, Mark Walton, and Marlin Adams. After several months of seeking a distributor for her film, Dash was finally offered a distribution contract with Kino International, a distributor of restored classics and foreign films. The contract stipulated limited theatrical exposure, being presented market by market nationwide rather than shown simultaneously at a large number of theatres across the country. This method of exhibition can dampen theatregoers’ interest because their desire to see the film must be maintained over a much longer period of time.

With KJM3 as marketing operatives, the campaign worked within Black communities that had regular contact with Black people: churches, barbershops and beauty salons, social organizations, local radio and television, Black newspapers and magazines, bookstores and other outlets that catered to Black people. As a result of disseminating to receptive audiences, Daughters of the Dust eventually became the highest grossing film that Kino had ever distributed. Michelle went on to do the same for other films and filmmakers, organizing, curating, while becoming Associate Professor of Media at the New School.

Pearl Bowser (1931-2023) was a prodigious archivist, producer/director, programmer and instrumental in keeping alive interest in early Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. Early in my research on Black women filmmakers I found Pearl’s studies and profiles of important events essential. A useful document of an occasion in Paris in 1980 was particularly helpful. The proceedings were preserved in the publication Black American Independent Cinema, 1920-1980. In yet another publication Pearl outlined the history of Black women makers as well those of women of color in In Color: Sixty Years of Images of Minority Women in the Media. Pearl Bowser was also the producer/director of noteworthy films Namibia: Independence Now! (1085) and Midnight Ramble: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Black Movies (1994), as well as the author of Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux and His Short Films, and His Audiences (2000).

Jacqueline Shearer (1946-1993) was the first writer to send in her article for my book Black Women Film and Video Artists (1998). Jackie’s documentary The Massachusetts 54^th Colored Infantry (1991) had just aired on PBS American Experience and she gave the keynote address at the Independent Film and Video Conference.⁴⁰ Jackie’s television program was a sorely needed re-examination of the lives and histories of Black soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Although the story was dramatized in the Hollywood film Glory (1989), Jackie relied on Black historians, such as the well-respected Barbara Fields, to correct the misrepresentations of the earlier film. Black people—men, women and entire families—lobbied and fought for the right of Black soldiers to enter the war and to be treated with respect. The existence of an active Black abolitionist movement in Boston in the nineteenth century was also highlighted in in the Massachusetts 54^th documentary establishing that Black people were active agents in the fight for the abolishment of enslavement. ⁴¹

Jacqueline Shearer, in her drive and commitment that media production and political activism were integrally intertwined is reminiscent of her predecessors Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker. Jackie was adamant in her belief that media could augment people’s understanding of their social matrices in which they were involved. In her keynote address, Jackie was emphatic that the political power of a film rested on its interactions with audiences. For her, the piece was not finished until it played before people.

Never letting up on her goals of media developed with honesty and integrity, Jackie testified before the United States Congress in her fight for funds for independent filmmakers, Jackie subsequently became the first board president of the funding agency Independent Television Service (ITVS) in 1992.

Black Women Filmmakers: In Their Own Words

In winter 2000 I invited 5 experienced filmmakers to my class on Black Women Filmmakers at the University of California, Santa Barbara: Cauleen Smith, Camille Billops, Michelle Parkerson, Julie Dash, and Dianne Houston. Their presentations to the class and interviews with me afterward, offered unique insights into the world of creating art that made a difference.

Cauleen talked about her experience making a feature-length dramatic film while she was still a graduate student at UCLA. The Department of Film frowned on such ventures and even prohibited it. Cauleen, however, looked at the devastation of inner city communities and the wreckage of young lives there. The result was her film Drylongso (1999).⁴²

Drylongso is an especially provocative dramatic film that has a unique relevance in the contemporary moment. Drylongso opens with the idea of “the endangered Black male,” then evolves into a parallel look at the perils inherent in young Black girls’ lives. Very carefully, with touching poignancy, Cauleen Smith takes the viewer into the lives of “endangered Black youth.” Smith’s filmmaking skills were enhanced by her training and experience, studying with Angela Davis when Davis was a faculty member at San Francisco State University, and working as a production assistant on A Place of Rage. The depth of Cauleen Smith’s imaginative tools were shown earlier in a short experimental film Chronicles of a Lying Spirit (by Kelly Gabron) (1992), that offers a blitzkrieg history of the historical treatment of Black women. Chronicles of a Lying Spirit was one of the first films by a Black woman to be shown and celebrated at the notoriously restrictive Flaherty Documentary Film Festival. For Cauleen, Chronicles “was an homage to all the accomplished Black women in global history who are not documented anywhere.” ⁴³

Camille Billops made “home-movie” style films with her husband James V. Hatch. Their film Finding Christa (1991) received the Grand Jury Prize for documentaries at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. Their first film Suzanne, Suzanne started out as a home movie to aid one of Camille’s nieces who was recovering from drug addiction. Camille related with humor to the class how naïve the beginning filmmakers were: “We ran out of money because we thought we were going to be like my family’s home movies. We thought the whole thing would cost $600.” The eventual cost was over $20,000 and the film has since become a part of the National Film Registry, a government funded organization to preserve films of historical and social importance. ⁴⁴

Camille Billops (1933-2019) was an artist, sculptor, printmaker, writer archivist, who with her husband (a Professor of Theater Arts and one of the finest historians of Black Theatre history), was outrageously totally committed to the furtherance of Black progress. Camille offered an understanding of the concept “affirmative action”: “we’ve named it the wrong thing. We should say—what white males have had, because they were white, because they were males. We need to call it access, just access.” Further, Camille remarked about the joys of being a Black woman: “I love my life, I love the possibilities of being a Black woman. People say ‘what does it mean to be a Black woman,’ as if it means being on the back of the line.” Camille considered it as not the back of the line, but “as a circle.” ⁴⁵

Michelle Parkerson has a long history as a pioneer of Black Lesbian film and video, beginning in the 1970s, including 1980s Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock (1983), and in the 1990s A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde (1995). As part of the American Film Institute Directing Workshop, Michelle completed a science fiction video set in the year 2086, a New Age Amazon Fable, Odds and Ends (1993).

Michelle’s documentary Sweet Honey in the Rock introduced a wider audience to the political force of this musical group. Founded by Bernice Johnson Reagon, a protégé of Ella Baker, Reagon lauds Baker as her political mother for Baker’s example recognizing the potential for resistance in every individual, helping her to understand the power of music as a potent force in generating concentrated, large-scale opposition to varied manifestations of injustice. Reagon’s goal in the formation of Sweet Honey in the Rock was to provide the inspiration that motivated people toward collective action for social change. In Michelle’s documentary Reagon states that Ella Baker’s influence made her realize that songs can do more than make you feel good; they can express a collective awareness of social and political conditions.⁴⁶ The song Reagon composed for Fundi, “Ella’s Song,” accompanies other political documentaries Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (1994), directed by Pat Saunders and Rea Tajiri and Faith Even to the Fire: Nuns for Social Justice (1992), directed by Sylvia Morales and Jean Victor, and is a part of LisaGay Hamilton’s Beah: A Black Women Speaks (2003).

Michelle co-directed A Litany for Survival, a trenchant, intimate look at the life of an influential activist who intersected three critical social movements—civil rights, feminism, and Lesbian and Gay rights, Audre Lorde (1934-1992). Audre Lorde was named the New York State Poet for 1991-1993. In her speech as state poet, Lorde identified herself as a Black Lesbian, feminist, warrior, poet, mother. The title of the documentary, A Litany for Survival, comes from a poem of Lorde’s and reflects that theme. For Lorde, those whose very existence placed them at constant risk of oppression (women, people of color, Lesbian and Gay people, the poor, other abled people, the disenfranchised, among others), as Lorde writes “we were never meant to survive.” ⁴⁷

On activism and protest, Audre Lorde sees no separation between her art and social protest: “I see protest as a genuine means of encouraging someone to feel the inconsistencies, the horror of the lives we are living. Social protest is saying that we do not have to live this way. If we feel deeply, and we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply, we will find the germ of answers to bring about change.”⁴⁸ In Lorde’s essay, “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” one of the most influential (among many), Lorde sets forth the tenets of female empowerment that reclaims the lifeforce of creative energy within women’s lives that exists on both the spiritual and political plane, that contains the idea of “moral passion” that is the core of grassroots activism. ⁴⁹

A Litany for Survival contains interviews with insightful artists and movement organizers, including longtime public mover and LGBT rights advocate Barbara Smith, Black Arts era essayist Sonia Sanchez, fiery Black Lesbian poet Sapphire, and memorable Black Gay writer Essex Hemphill, offer loving testimony to the life of a woman who demonstrated that political and cultural activism can be effectively translated through cultural forms.

Eight years in the making with her producer/co-director Ada Gay Griffin, searching for financial backing and completion funds, Michelle talked about the generosity of Audre Lorde allowing the filmmakers to film her during the last months of her illness from breast cancer. Lorde died in 1992 and the filmmakers were three years from the completion of the documentary. Michelle revealed that the footage from those last months were the most touching and inspirational of the documentary: “When I saw that footage, I knew that was the last scene. We intentionally intensified a couple of glitches in the video; we wanted people to see that we enhanced it so that people were keenly aware that this was, as (Lorde) said in the beginning of the film, yet another artifact, as we see in her expression at the end, there is a certain look in her eye.” ⁵⁰

Julie Dash talked about the process of making films/television programs outside of the independent process: “Anything you see that is not made totally independent of other producers is not all me. Every little 3 seconds is fought for. It is a process of negotiation.” After Julie’s success with her independent film, the first by a Black women filmmaker in theatrical distribution, Julie helmed commercial ventures: Funny Valentines (1999), Love Song (2000), and the television film The Rosa Parks Story (2002). For Julie “You’re constantly struggling to maintain a balance…I fought editors cutting out dialogue because the person didn’t understand what they were saying. So you really have to be there during the editing process because it is a continuation of the directing process.” ⁵¹

Julie’s observations were evident during her later direction of The Rosa Parks Story. Television is a producer’s medium and a lot will depend on their knowledge of the subject of the program. In one instance of the story of the women who refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, thus beginning the year-long bus boycott and the latter-day civil rights movement, Dash wanted to include mention of legendary movement activist Septima Clark. The producers were concerned about whether Clark was white or Black. It took more than reassurance from Julie that Clark was Black.⁵²

Julie had strong feelings about notions from some outside the Black community that Parks simply refused to move because she was tired; it was a political act and Julie wanted that demonstrated. Julie also wanted to show the romantic side of the relationship between Rosa Parks and her husband Raymond. Tender moments and intimacy were included at Julie’s insistence. The politics of the Black community of Montgomery were given full play in Julie’s film, aided in part by having Angela Bassett as star and one of the producers. A telling moment in production occurred when Julie shot the image of the NAACP flag with the words “A Man was Lynched Today”: “I just shot that. I didn’t even put it in the script. I didn’t even try to get it in the script because I didn’t want to argue it, so I just shot it.” ⁵³

The Rosa Parks Story is an impressive production, showing a much more complete and comprehensive portrait of a civil rights hero. The determination of a Black woman to work within mainstream industry with her integrity intact resulted in a product of the high caliber of The Rosa Parks Story.

Dianne Houston, speaking from her position as an Academy Award nominated film director, pointed out aspects of the unique point of view of Black women filmmakers: “It’s great to be able to see a story told by somebody who knows it. When somebody knows a story, it enlightens everybody who comes to see it.”⁵⁴

Dianne’s film Tuesday Morning Ride (1995) offers an engaging look into the lives not seen before in mainstream film. At thirty-five minutes in length, the film—starring legendary actors Ruby Dee, Bill Cobbs, and Vondie Curtis Hall, and based upon the 1933 short story “A Summer Tragedy,” written by Arna Bontemps—is loaded with meaning and importance. Dianne’s portrait of a loving, elderly couple courageously facing debilitating illness is unique in cinema history. Dianne relates the original Bontemps characters are old, sick, and have nothing to live for. For her characters, she wanted a different spin on the outcome: “I always loved the beautiful possibilities of the original story, but when I went to write it as Tuesday Morning Ride, the first thing I realized is that it could not be a tragedy. Tuesday is about an older man and woman who have everything to live for but who lack a society to do it in, who lack a support system to live life of the quality that they want. It had to be a love story.”⁵⁵

For what could have been heartbreaking, Dianne’s film has moments of whimsy, humor, sexual intimacy between an older Black couple, and grace that only an actor of the status of Ruby Dee brings to a character. Two particularly memorable scenes—Ruby Dee as the blind character Jenny solo dancing to Nina Simone’s “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl,” and young Black people (actors Erica Gimpel, Cree Summer, and Vondie Curtis Hall) and their seemingly benign disregard of Black cultural traditions—demonstrate the sure-handed direction of someone well-versed in rendering Black cultural nuances.

Dianne went on from there to become the Executive Story Editor and one of the directors for Steven Bochco’s television series City of Angels, the only prime-time network television series in 1999-2000 featuring a predominately Black cast and production personnel. Previous to this, Dianne was the Executive Story Editor for the 1990 television series Brewster Place (produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey), and has directed episodes of The Education of Max Bickford and NYPD Blue. Recently, Dianne Houston directed Michael Jackson: Searching for Neverland (2017).

Black Women Film and Video Artists and their Interpretive Communities:

Abstract concepts become palpable form in Black women’s cultural work. Notions of consciousness, agency, self-determination, transformation (both individual and cultural), even the idealistic word “empowerment” become real and achievable. For me, early affirmation came when I began my research on playwright Lorraine Hansberry. Hansberry’s life, political writings and creative output were dedicated to the premise that captured Africans came to this country fighting back. Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), was much more than a pleasant integrationist desire of a Black family to move from an inner-city tenement to a home located in a white neighborhood. One of the searing conflicts in the play revolved around the son’s almost acceptance of a white homeowner’s proposition offering the family money not to move into the white neighborhood. The mother, as head of the family, is distraught at the son for even considering such an offer, telling him:

Son—I came from five generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers…but ain’t nobody in my family never let nobody pay ‘em no money that was a way of telling us we wasn’t fit to walk the earth. We ain’t never been that poor…we ain’t never been that dead inside. (Act III, scene 1).

Black women cultural producers, critics/scholars, and audience members form what is usefully categorized as an interpretive community. Each component is recognizably significant for the whole at key junctures. A key example occurred with the publication of the novel, The Color Purple (1982), and later the 1985 film (which was perceived by mainstream audiences as being the same as the novel, that is, emanating from a Black woman’s consciousness). The effect was catalytic. Issues important to Black women’s lives were widely discussed as they had not been before. Topics such as domestic violence, incest, female bonding, women who were economically independent, such as the character Shug Avery; these subjects and more were given prominence because of the impact of Walker’s The Color Purple. A Black woman originated the work and later it gained a life of its own embroiled as it was in the debates and criticism of the film version.

For the Black women audience members I interviewed, Walker’s work, novel and film, was an epiphany in that subjects discussed intra-community were brought out into the open. What had been understood at multiple levels of consciousness came into fuller awareness for the women, that as a group, Black women possessed a strength of will and community that had enabled them to survive, and in many ways, triumph in the face of adversity.

With the film by independent director Julie Dash and Daughters of the Dust, the influence of the audience was more pronounced. Dash, similar to Alice Walker, as cultural producers, had created powerful works. Black women as audience were instrumental in bringing a different perspective, and in both instances, a more meaningful viewpoint, to the works. In the case of Daughters of the Dust, the audience saved the film. Through their attendance in large numbers wherever the film was shown and through the film being publicized in appropriate venues, word of mouth, Daughters of the Dust remained in public exhibition long enough for its value to be appreciated.

Black female critics and scholars are involved in what has been categorized as a “politics of interpretation,” in that we analyze Black women’s cultural productions from a perspective more appropriate to the works. I am reminded of when I first circulated my prospectus, with accompanying examples of interviews with Black women, which was eventually published as Black Women as Cultural Readers (1995) by Columbia University Press. Many of the initial reviewers thought the women I interviewed were too well-spoken, too articulate; that I had interviewed my colleagues in the Academy (I had not), and thus the women could not be considered representative of the majority of Black female viewers of The Color Purple. Several of the reviewers wrote that the women’s comments were unrealistic. I took from this that the reviewers were mainstream academics whose expectations of how they presumed Black people talked were not met. In a later set of interviews on Daughters of the Dust, I shared with the women these reviewers’ comments and the women were amused. One of the women asked a rhetorical question, toward which the other women responded with spirited agreement: “Don’t you think we would have come off sounding stupid if someone other than another Black woman was doing research on us?”

When I set out to do a book on Black women filmmakers, I did it for very personal reasons. I had seen Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker, not knowing when I first saw it that it was directed by a Black woman. Later, when I saw Julie Dash’s Illusions (1982), I was simply blown away by the sheer power and talent displayed by the film. In time I became more aware of the films of Black women filmmakers and wanted to teach them. With university budgets being what they were, I did not think I could acquire the films, first off, and I wanted to do justice to the films and filmmakers by having sufficient critical background to present them responsibly. I was then currently involved in research on media adaptations of Black women writers, and have since co-authored an article on the 1989 media version of Gloria Naylor’s novel The Women of Brewster Place (1982).⁵⁶ Almost as an avocation I began doing research on Black women filmmakers. Then I did what in my experience scholars do: to really know something you teach a course on it. This forces you to gather the necessary material and to prepare it in some coherent form. I talked with other women who were teaching courses based in large measure on Black women’s films.

Carmen Coustaut, director of Extra Change (1987) and her University of Southern California M.F.A. thesis film Justifiable Homicide (1981), was teaching at the University of Maryland, College Park and who had previously taught at Howard University, was very generous with teaching materials and films. Carmen also has a treasure trove of 30 interviews with Black women filmmakers facilitated through a Rockefeller Foundation grant.⁵⁷ Carmen’s material on Kathleen Collins is essential for rounding out the information on this important editor and filmmaker.

When I first taught the films in 1992, although I really enjoyed the course and students were quite taken with the films, I realized how difficult it would be for others to teach a similar course. Others, that is, without similar motivation. And the films needed to be taught and the filmmakers themselves could benefit from the financial support of film rentals. Students in Film Studies, Women and Gender Studies, in Black Studies and allied areas, and even Literature courses needed to have exposure to the subject matter these filmmakers were presenting. Background on the films and filmmakers was a necessity. That’s when I knew I would do a book on the subject.

For the book I knew I would have filmmakers and critics/scholars writing articles. Having the filmmakers in the book was not easy, at that time, because editors wanted scholars rather than makers. I insisted on having the makers and the proposed book was turned down several times. The makers were essential because these were women who had been trained at the finest universities of film instruction—UCLA, USC, NYU, Northwestern, Columbia, Stanford, Temple, and the American Film Institute, among others. The women were knowledgeable about film and media theory and criticism and many had written the scripts for their own films. They could not only write about their own films, they were quite capable of analyzing the works within the broader context of film theory. Eventually the edited collection of original articles was published by Routledge, Black Women Film and Video Artists (1998), and I am quite pleased with it. Teaching the course on Black women filmmakers over time, the book has proven to be very valuable. I designed it to be useful for people knowledgeable about film scholarship in addition to those who simply have a desire to use the films in their classes. There are tools to aid in presenting the course including a suggested syllabus, along with an explanation for the structure and organization of the course. There is a preliminary overview placing the works and the filmmakers in an understandable context. The background on the making of the films written by the filmmakers works well because this is information not available elsewhere (especially at that time). It is like filmmakers sharing information the way they would to another filmmaker. It is privileged, inside information that scholars and others can access to have a clear basis for analysis, rather than looking outside the text itself.

Innovations in form, technique, content, and so on, by Black women filmmakers have been useful for others. Working independently, because they were shut out of mainstream production facilities, the women had to come up with their own resources for subject matter, actors, crew and everything else. This allowed the women to work without some constraints. There were limitations, of course, in lack of money and necessities to accomplish what they truly wanted. But working within available resources, being creative with what they had, and having no one telling them what to do, prompted innovations in many areas. (Carmen Coustaut used an opening congruent with the subject of her film Extra Change: a young girl in love with a young boy. Letters written in colored chalk on a sidewalk, designed in hop-scotch squares with young Black girls playing hop-scotch, became the opening credits). Courage was also required to persevere because not only were they shut out of established production facilities, but once the films were completed, there was no place to show them. Independent festivals and distribution companies were not accepting Black women’s work. The women had to develop a feel for marketing their works. Aided in the long run by this shut out, the women sought more contact with audiences, with people who were actually watching the films. So the formulaic conventions of film were not something the women had to cater to, because they were not being supported anyway.

Dash’s film Daughters of the Dust is important in so many ways. It was different, and it was different at a time when films by Black male directors were duplicating themselves in the rush to cash in on the currency of mainstream film industry funding certain kinds of films and filmmakers. It was reminiscent of the early 1970s when the trend toward Black action-adventure films was paramount. In the midst of this cycle, enter Daughters of the Dust. And the film found an audience, or rather, audiences sought out the film. Because it was distributed independently and marketed independently, audience had to make an effort to go see the film. Which they did, despite early mainstream critics dismissal of it. This particular film changed perceptions of audience and altered the way in which films are marketed to certain audiences.

Student responses to films directed by Black women filmmakers are illuminating. After viewing Gotta Make This Journey: Sweet Honey in the Rock, students successfully sought university funds to bring the singing group to UCSB. Standing room only attendance greeted filmmakers Dee Rees and Nekisa Cooper for their screening of the early promotional version of Pariah in 2009. During the isolation caused by the Covid pandemic and remote instruction, many students viewed the films while at home living with families. Shola Lynch’s Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed (2004) received a favorable reception from students and their families. One heart-tugging reaction occurred from the screening of director Carol Munday Lawrence’s Sports Profile (1981) portrait of athlete Alice Coachman. Alice Coachman, broke United States and Olympic records in the high jump, becoming the first Black female to win an Olympic Gold Medal, which she won for the United States at the 1948 London Games.⁵⁸ In another instance, a returning Black female student displayed her admiration for the film A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde, enlisting her 7-year-old daughter in the construction of her Poster final project.

“Activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet”—Alice Walker

The conjoining of politically engaged Black women and filmmakers is brought to cinematic fruition in recent documentaries and dramatic narratives. Though significant and noteworthy the following listing is not an exhaustive accounting of recent Black women’s films.

Pratibha Parmar’s biographical documentary Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth (2014) underscores the author and activist’s landmark achievements. Awarded the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for The Color Purple (1982), Walker was the first person to teach a university course on Black women writers (Wellesley 1977) and her body of work was instrumental in placing Black feminist scholarship in a university setting. Walker’s essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” was one of the first well-known pieces to establish the value of Black women’s material culture. She writes of the psychic toll on those for whom there is no recognized outlet for their talents: “driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there is no release.”⁵⁹ This creativity finds expression in Black women’s gardens, quilts, foods, pottery, sculptures, sewing and other myriad forms of useful endeavors.

Among a cluster of recent documentaries exploring the lives of Black females are Shola Lynch’s Chisholm ’72: Unbought and Unbossed (2004) examining the life of the first Black person to run for president of the United States and, Lynch’s Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2013). Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock (2012), by Sharon La Cruise, keeps alive the memory of the courageous Black female who fought for the right of nine Black students to attend the high school in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957; and, Rita Coburn Whack’s co-direction of Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise (2016) and Coburn Whack’s Marian Anderson: The Whole World in her Hands (2022), about the contralto, classical singer who in 1939 was denied an opportunity by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) to perform before an integrated audience at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. In response, through the intervention of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Anderson appeared in concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939 to the enthusiasm of an integrated crowd and a radio audience.

The Angelou film probes the life journey of the poet, dancer, and essayist who established the form of autobiography as literature, replicating the intent of the slave narratives in her first book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), and was the second person to deliver a poem at the inauguration of a U.S. president after Robert Frost did so at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Angelou offered her original poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.

Notable contemporary dramatic narratives helmed by Black woman include Mudbound (2017), directed and co-adapted by Dee Rees. Rees received an Academy Award nomination of Best Adapted Screenplay, a first for a Black female. Ava DuVernay became the first Black female with a budget over $100 million dollars to direct the Walt Disney live-action film A Wrinkle in Time (2018), following up her Academy Award nominated Best Picture for Selma (2014).

Love and Basketball (2000), written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, is one of the most successful films directed by a Black woman. A young female’s sports anthem, the success of Love and Basketball led to Prince-Bythewood being selected to direct the critically acclaimed HBO adaptation of novelist Terry McMillan’s Disappearing Acts in 2000. Prince-Bythewood later adapted and directed Sue Monk Kidd’s 2002 novel The Secret Life of Bees into the 2008 film starring Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Alicia Keys, and Dakota Fanning. Her recent film Beyond the Lights (2014) is a compelling story of a young Black singer’s turmoil about the demands of being a celebrity performer. The Woman King (2022), starring Viola Davis in a standout role, is Prince-Bythewood’s recent film. Highly visible, critically and financially successful, The Woman King reaches back into history, specifically 1820, telling the story of the all-female group of warriors who protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey.

Exploring a film in a different direction, Kasi Lemmons directed Black Nativity (2013), a musical loosely based on the 1961 play of the same name by playwright and poet Langston Hughes. Lemmons’ earlier film Eve’s Bayou (1997), was the highest grossing independent film of 1997. Lemmons most recent work is a biography Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022). Earlier Lemmons presented a thoroughly engaging biography of formerly enslaved Harriet Tubman, who escaped to freedom, then subsequently led hundreds of other enslaved Black people to freedom by way of the Underground Railroad. Lemmons’ film Harriet (2019), is refreshing combination of hope, survival and triumph through a cruel system by a dedicated woman who refused to give up.

A 14-year-old Black male youngster was killed in 1955 in Money, Mississippi, setting off decades of justice movements across the United States. Till (2022), co-written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu, focuses on the mother, Mamie Till Mobley, of Emmett Till, and her courageous journey to the bring to justice the Southern white men who brutalized her son. A major component of the Civil Rights Movement, Mamie Till Mobley is lovingly presented in Till as a devoted mother and a dedicated movement activist.

Conclusion:

In a prescient 1966 article Dee wrote for Negro Digest, “Some Reflections on the Negro Actress: The Tattered Queens,” Ruby Dee pointed toward the future for Black filmmakers:

More people see films than ever go to the theatre. If one of the purposes of art is to effect change, we must make every effort to become proficient in every phase of filmmaking, working for inclusion in American films at every possible level. The reality is that we are but 10 percent of a population which is geared to segregate and to discriminate—improving, I believe, but desperately in need of artistic effort to help change the image of the Negro and so effect social change more quickly. As art not only reflects life but also influences it, we must dedicate ourselves to the improvement of life and its truths—about women, about Negroes.⁶⁰

That enslaved Black women cast long shadows of survival, triumph, and sustaining creativity is borne out in the history of Black women filmmakers. From the artifacts of material culture in the form of quilt construction and design, to, as described by Alice Walker’s designation of everyday Black women’s creative expression in their gardens, food choices, sewing, among other useful endeavors, the women sustained their families and communities. Black female artisans have demonstrated their value throughout the history of their enforced sojourn in this country, through the slave narratives, to poems, essays, novels, theatre, and the myriad forms of television and film exhibition. Their cultural manifestations magnify female participants perception of their material circumstances, motivating them toward activism, thereby strengthening their ability as a potent social force. On many levels, Black women are part and parcel of Black freedom movements. In the spirit of Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, the radical tradition continues.

[The National Film Registry has certified as historically, culturally and aesthetically significant eleven films directed by Black women for inclusion in the national archive.]