FQ7203 02 Gates Gillespie 13..43

MANIFESTO Reclaiming Black Film and must teach Oscar Micheaux, but also the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, and the long histories of early and nonextant Media Studies black film that scholars like Jacqueline Stewart, Pearl Bowser, Allyson Nadia Field, and others have endeavored to bring to Racquel J. Gates and Michael Boyce Gillespie light. Furthermore, greater focus on the work of black women and queer filmmakers will further the necessary decentering of film studies’ perspectival tendencies and ultimately dispute the narrow categorical meanings attributed to black film. The Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/72/3/13/92567/fq_2019_72_3_13.pdf by University of California Santa Cruz user on 19 October 2020 Historically, the study of the idea of black film has been a study of black film must always be a rebel act. fraught, insightful, and generative enterprise—be it a matter of industrial capital and its delimitation of film practice in We must stop referring to every significant black film or me- “ ” terms of profit, or the tendency to insist that the “black” of dia text as first, thus erasing the labor and intellectual con- black film be only a biological determinant and never a for- tributions of all who came before. mal proposition. In many ways, the black film as an object of The excitement around films such as Get Out (Jordan Peele, study mirrors the history of America, the history of an idea of 2017), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016), Black Panther (Ryan race. While the field continues to shift and change, and the Coogler, 2018), and, most recently, Sorry to Bother You (Boots study of black film becomes more common, it is often still to- Riley, 2018) tends to produce a discourse of exceptionalism, kenized by the industry. Discussion about black film and me- of “firsts” (“first film to do X”). Critical discussion around dia is booming in academic programs (e.g., American Studies, the films tends to tacitly frame them in terms of a white film Women and Gender Studies, English) and in Film and Media landscape, suggesting that their worth rests in their ability to Studies, but it is doing so even more in nonacademic spaces, look and sound like standard (i.e., white) films, severing with blogs, podcasts, and think pieces proliferating at a rapid their ties to black film history and distancing them from pace. We offer our manifesto, recognizing that film manifes- “unexceptional” black films in the present. As a final note, tos never whisper. Their messages envision political, aesthetic, the vibrant and insightful work of the New Negress Film and cultural possibilities. They demand and plot. They ques- Society, a collective of black women filmmakers (Frances tion and insist. What follows are expectations bundled as con- Bodomo, Dyani Douze, Ja’Tovia Gary, Chanelle Aponte cerns for not only the renderings of black film to come but, as Pearson, and Stefani Saintonge), thrives in ways counter to well, the thinking on blackness and cinema that we hope the tacitly industry-minded insistence on black cinema ex- 1 will thrive and inspire future discussions. We are devising ceptionalism. new terms of engagement with current developments in mind. We must be critical and suspicious of academic essays, panels, and other activities about black film that do not substantially We must remember that traditionally the field of film stud- engage with or cite film and media studies scholarship. ies was designed around the centering of heterosexual white men. This forms the bedrock of the film industry and of film How is it possible to discuss black film without regard to the studies. debates and inquiries that continue to provide the critical mo- mentum that is black film and media discourse? The univer- This means that the study of black film, however one defines sal experience of watching film gives the false impression that black film, has as a practice and a product often been treated as we are all equally knowledgeable about film’shistories,theo- additional or derivative rather than integral (e.g., the infamous ries, and contexts. Moreover, this practice renders invisible the “race week” in any Intro to Film/Media course). We must existence of cinema studies, turning film into something that learn, acknowledge, and teach that blackness has been central anyone can “do.” Having an opinion about a film does not to the history of film since the birth of the medium, not just constitute film and media training. starting with The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915). We We must insist on being attentive to issues of film form as Film Quarterly,Vol.72,Number3,pp.13–43, ISSN 0015-1386, electronic ISSN 1533-8630. © 2019 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please opposed to focusing on content alone. direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www. Focusing on the conventions of Disney/Marvel cinema might ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/FQ.2019.72.3.13. help us appreciate how Black Panther revises and perpetuates FILM QUARTERLY 13 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/72/3/13/92567/fq_2019_72_3_13.pdf by University of California Santa Cruz user on 19 October 2020 Terence Nance’s alternative anthology series, Random Acts of Flyness (HBO, 2018) comic superhero cinema. Thinking through the modalities We must go to film festivals. We must follow film pro- of black speculative fiction and Afrofuturism in Sorry to grammers. Bother You helps to ground the film’s trenchant and absurd- Black film thrives in arenas other than the standard cineplex. ist critique of capital, race, and class. What does it mean to What might it mean to give as much attention to this context understand BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018) as Blaxploi- as to the industrial/commercial buzz? This is especially the tation fantasy and visual historiography of American cin- case for 2018, with the Flaherty Seminar programming of ema? The thinking to come on Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Greg De Cuir and Kevin Jerome Everson; Maori Karmael Street Could Talk (2018) as a film adaptation that visually Holmes’s continued brilliance directing the seventh edition renders James Baldwin’stextmustalsoconsiderhowthis of the BlackStar Film Festival in Philadelphia; the continued rendering occurs with a consequential sonic component. It’s circulation of the “Black Radical Imagination” touring pro- important to think about the formal principles across gram of experimental/avant-garde shorts cofounded by Erin experimental/avant-garde work (e.g., Kevin Jerome Everson, Christovale and Amir George and currently programed by Cauleen Smith, Christopher Harris, Ephraim Asili) to Darol Olu Kae and Jheanelle Brown; the Smithsonian’s appreciate the range of aesthetic capacities evinced by African American Film Festival; Ashley Clark’sfilmpro- the idea of black film. Terence Nance’s Random Acts of 3 gramming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In particu- Flyness (2018) models an alternative sense of anthology- lar, Clark’s programs this year have been generative and television seriality, a production that flourishes on formal collaborative opportunities to expansively appreciate cinema. experimentation and collectivity. It restages the late-night The “Fight the Power: Black Superheroes on Film” series variety television conceit with an absurdist cycling across framed the then-impending release of Black Panther, the formats and modalities. The inventiveness of Yance BAMcinématek and the Racial Imaginary Institute’s “On Ford’s Strong Island (2017) requires appreciating how the Whiteness” series was tied to the Whiteness Symposium at film redefines documentary form with its exquisite build- the Kitchen, and the “Say It Loud: Cinema in the Age of ingofanarchiveandFord’s direct address. Moreover, the Black Power (1966–1981)” series was tied to the “Soul of a film remains immune to humanist or sentimental recupera- Nation” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. tion in its consideration of familial grief, injustice, and the antiblack ways that whiteness always operates as the arbiter We must stop championing representation as a marker of 2 of truth. racial progressiveness, and instead begin concentrating on 14 SPRING 2019 the themes and ideas with which those representations If the representation debate revival must occur, then at least engage. reread Stuart Hall. For far too long, both the academic and popular study of black film and media studies has focused too narrowly on the Notes mere presence of black bodies both in front of and behind 1. For more information on the New Negress Film Society, see the camera. Black bodies do not equal blackness. Blackness https://newnegressfilmsociety.com/. does not necessarily equal black liberation or recuperation. 2. Inspired by Yance Ford’s postscreening comments at the A study of black film and media that merely equates the in- Museum of Modern Art, New Directors/New Films Series, 19 2017 clusionofblackmakersandcharacterswithrevolutionary March , . 3. For more on Black Radical Imagination, see http://blackradi Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/72/3/13/92567/fq_2019_72_3_13.pdf by University of California Santa Cruz user on 19 October 2020 cinematic practice will never truly effect change, but rather, calimagination.com; and Tiffany Barber and Jerome Dent, will simply instantiate a history of black bodies labored by “Urban Video Project: Interview with Curators of Black and laboring for whiteness on ideological and formal levels Radical Imagination,” LightWork,March20, 2015, www. (e.g., blackface, social-problem cinema). Black film historiog- lightwork.org/tag/black-radical-imagination/. raphy does not have to be a progressive fantasy. Perhaps, ambivalence might be a good place to start. MANIFESTO A Queer(’s) Cinema body, person to person.

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