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FTV 114 Film Genres: Spring 2014 Tues/Thurs 9-11:20am, 1409 Melnitz & weekly discussion sections Professor Allyson Nadia Field (310) 825-4239; [email protected] Office hours: Tues 11:30-1:30, 3335 Macgowan

T.A.s: Sean Bristol-Lee ([email protected]), Aruna Ekanayake ([email protected]), and Dahlia Schweitzer ([email protected])

Course Description The course covers the rich and diverse history of African American filmmaking from the silent era to the present day. Emphasis is on the use of film as a medium of protest, resistance, and cultural affirmation. Films will be discussed in the context of the complex issues surrounding race and representation in American cinema. Special attention will be paid to the preservation and restoration work of the UCLA Film & Television Archive's collection of African American films.

Given the brevity of the quarter, the course is organized in three sections to cover key periods in the trajectory of African American cinema: “” (silent and sound), 1970s Black film cultures, and 1990s to contemporary Black cinema.

This 5-unit course satisfies the Arts & Humanities GE (Visual and Performance Arts Analysis and Practice)

Course Objectives As a GE, the course aims to provide students with the perspectives and intellectual skills necessary to comprehend and think critically about our situation in the world as human beings. In particular, this course provides students with the basic means to appreciate and evaluate the ongoing efforts of humans to explain, translate, and transform our diverse experiences of the world through such media as language, literature, philosophical systems, images, sounds, and performances. The course will introduce students to the historical development and fundamental intellectual and ethical issues associated African American cinema. Through the lens of African American cinema, the course also investigates the complex relations between artistic and humanistic expression and other facets of society and culture.

Requirements • Short paper (~3 pages, due April 22 at the start of lecture): 10% • Midterm exam (1 hour, Thursday, May 1): 20% • Long paper—open topic to be approved by your TA (~8 pages, due May 27 at the start of lecture): 20% • Final Exam (Tuesday, June 10th, 2014, 11:30-2:30): 30% • Active and thoughtful participation in section: 20%

Readings All readings are available on the course website.

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Part I: “Race Film” & Beyond

Week 1 – Course Introduction Tuesday April 1 St. Louis Blues (Dir. Dudley Murphy, 1929, 16’) Now (Dir. Santiago Álvarez, 1964, 5’) When it Rains (Dir. Charles Burnett, 1995, 13’)

Thursday April 3 Within Our Gates (Dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1920, 79’)

Clips from The Birth of a Nation (Dir. D.W. Griffith, 1915, 190’)

Reading: Jane Gaines, “Within Our Gates: From Race Melodrama to Opportunity Narrative.” Eds. Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser. Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African- American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of t he Silent Era. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (2001): 67-80. Jacqueline Stewart, Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press (2005): Chapter 7: 219-244.

Week 2 – “Race Film” and its audiences Tuesday April 8 Body and Soul (Dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1925, 79’)

Clips from Bound Train (Dir. James and Eloyce Gist, 1929-30) Selections from Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork footage (Dir. Zora Neale Hurston, 1928, 5’)

Reading: Charlene Regester, “Black Movie-going in Durham and Other North Carolina Cities during the Early Period of American Cinema.” Film History 17.1 (2005): 113-124. Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence, Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000: Chapter 6: 176-208.

Thursday April 10 The Blood of (Dir. Spencer Williams, 1941, 68’) Dirty Gertie from Harlem, U.S.A. (Dir. Spencer Williams, 1946, 60’)

Reading: Adrienne Lanier-Seward. “Spencer Williams.” Black Camera 4.1 (Spring, 1989): 3-4.

Week 3 – Film & Social Change: Interracial Collaborations in the 60s Tuesday April 15 Felicia (Dirs. Bob Dickson, Alan Gorg, Trevor Greenwood, 1965, 13’) Nothing But a Man (Dir. Michael Roemer, 1964, 95’)

Lisa Doris Alexander. “Nothing But a Man Revisited.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 41.3 (September, 2013): 136-144. 3

Thursday April 17 Black Panther (a.k.a. Off the Pig) (Newsreel, 1968, 15’) Dutchman (Dir. Anthony Harvey, 1967, 55’)

Reading: Werner Sollors, Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones: The Quest for a “Populist Modernism”. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978, pgs. 1-9, 117-133. Lisa Gail Collins and Margo Natalie Crawford. “Introduction: Power to the People!: The Art of Black Power.” New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006: 1-19. Michael Renov. “Newsreel: Old and New. Towards an Historical Profile.” Film Quarterly 41.1 (Autumn 1987): 20-33.

Part II: 1970s Black Film Cultures

Week 4 – Black Independent Filmmaking & (Re)discovery of the Black urban audience Tuesday April 22 *Short Paper Due

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1971, 97’)

Clips from Story of a 3-Day Pass (Dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1968, 87’) Clips from Watermelon Man (Dir. Melvin Van Peebles, 1970, 100’)

Reading: Huey P. Newton, “A Revolutionary Analysis of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.” Black Panther Intercommunal News Service. June 19, 1971. Lerone Bennett, Jr. “The Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland.” Ebony. September, 1971: 106-118. Melvin Van Peebles and James Surowiecki. “Making It.” Transition 79 (1999): pg. 176-192.

Thursday April 24 The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Dir. Ivan Dixon, 1973, 102’) Special presentation: Sean Bristol-Lee

Clips from Shaft (Dir. Gordon Parks, 1971, 100’)

Reading: Clayton Riley, “Shaft Can Do Everything—I Can Do Nothing.” New York Times August 13, 1972: pg. D9. “Blacks vs. Shaft.” Newsweek. August 28, 1972: p. 88. Junius Griffin, “Black Movie Boom: Good or Bad?” New York Times December 17, 1972: D3.

Week 5 – Alternatives to “Blaxploitation” Tuesday April 29 Car Wash (Dir. Michael Schultz, Universal, 1976, 97’)

Clips from Cooley High (Dir. Michael Schultz, AIP, 1975, 107’) 4

Thursday May 1 *Midterm Exam

Week 6 – The “L.A. Rebellion” Tuesday May 6 As Above So Below (Dir. Larry Clark, 1973, 52’) Illusions (Dir. , 1982, 34’) Your Children Come Back to You (Dir. Alile Sharon Larkin, 1979, 30’)

Reading: Familiarize yourself with the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s L.A. Rebellion website: http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/la-rebellion

Judylyn S. Ryan. “Outing the Black Feminist Filmmaker in Julie Dash’s Illusions.” Signs 30.1 (Autumn 2004): 1319-1344. S.V. Hartman and Farah Jasmine Griffin. “Are You as Colored as that Negro?: The Politics of Being Seen in Julie Dash’s Illusions.” Black American Literature Forum 25.2 (Summer, 1991): 361-373.

Thursday May 8 Bless their little hearts (Dir. Billy Woodberry, 1984, 80’)

Clips from Killer of Sheep (Dir. Charles Burnett, 1977, 83’) Clips from Bush Mama (Dir. Haile Gerima, 1979, 97’)

Reading: Ntongela Masilela. “The Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers.” Manthia Diawara, ed. Black American Cinema. New York: Routledge, 1993: 107-117. “The BFR Interview: Billy Woodberry: ‘At a Certain Point, I wanted to Make Films. To Try.’” Black Film Review 1.4 (1985): 3, 14-15.

Part III: 1990s-Contemporary Black Cinema

Week 7 – The New Commercial Black Film Tuesday May 13 Do the Right Thing (Dir. Spike Lee, 1989, 120’)

Reading: Wahneema Lubiano. “But Compared to what?: Reading Realism, Representation, and Essentialism in School Daze, do the Right Thing, and the Spike Lee Discourse” Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 25, No. 2, Black Film Issue (Summer, 1991), pp. 253-282. Lee, Spike and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. “Final Cut.” Transition, 52 (1991), pp. 177-204.

Thursday May 15 Boyz ’n the Hood (Dir. John Singleton, 1991, 112’) Special presentation: Aruna Ekanayake

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Reading: Paula J. Massood. Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003: 145-174. S. Craig Watkins. “Ghetto Reelness: Hollywood Film Production, Black Popular Culture and the Ghetto Action Film Cycle.” Steve Neale, ed. Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: BFI (2002): Chapter 16.

Week 8 – Black Women’s Filmmaking & Gender and Sexuality Tuesday May 20 (Dir. Julie Dash, 1991, 112’)

Reading: Julie Dash and Houston A. Baker, Jr. “Not Without my Daughters.” Transition, No. 57 (1992), pp. 150-166.

Thursday May 22 The Watermelon Woman (Dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1996, 90’)

Clips from Tongues Untied (Dir. Marlon Riggs, 1990, 55’)

Reading: Laura L. Sullivan. “Chasing Fae: The Watermelon Woman and Black Lesbian Possibility.” Callaloo 23.1 (Winter, 2000): 448-460. Marlon T. Riggs. “Notes of a Signifyin’ Snap! Queen.” Art Journal 50.3 (Autumn 1991): 60-64.

Week 9 – The contemporary scene Tuesday May 27 *Long Paper Due

Madea’s Family Reunion (Dir. Tyler Perry, 2006, 107’)

Reading: Margenta A. Christian. “Becoming Tyler: bill collector turned billion-dollar media mogul was molded from pain, promise and persistence.” Ebony. October 2008.

Thursday May 29 Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire (Dir. Lee Daniels, 2009, 110’) Special presentation: Dahlia Schweitzer

Reading: Lynn Hirschberg. “The Audacity of Precious.” The New York Times Magazine. October 25, 2009: 28-37; 68.

Week 10 – “A Banner Year” Tuesday June 3 Middle of Nowhere (Dir. Ava DuVernay, 2012, 100’) Special presentation: Ava DuVernay, TBD

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Thursday June 5 Fruitvale Station (Dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013, 85’) Special presentation: Fruitvale Station producers, TBD

*The Final Exam is Tuesday, June 10th, 2014, 11:30-2:30