"Examines how African-American as well as international films deploy film noir techniques in ways that encourage philosophical reflection. Combines philosophy, film studies, and cultural studies"--Provided by publisher.

Living in a segregated society, white Americans learn about African Americans through the images the media show. This text offers a look at the racial patterns in the mass media and how they shape the ambivalent attitudes of whites toward blacks.

This book pays tribute to the sacrifices and achievements of seven individuals who made difficult and controversial choices to insure that black Americans shared in the evolution of the nation's cultural heritage. Transcriptions and analyses of never-before published uncensored conversations with Lorenzo Tucker, Lillian Gish, King Vidor, Clarence Muse, Woody Strode, Charles Gordone, and Frederick Douglass O'Neal reveal many of the reasons and rationalizations behind a racist screen imagery in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. This primary source, replete with pictures, documentation, and extensive annotations, recounts through the words of important participants what happened to many film pioneers when a new generation of African-Americans rebelled against the nation's stereotyped film imagery. "A unique historical resource, this book is a fitting tribute to these artists, reminding us of their courage, integrity, and perseverance to succeed against great odds. The thorough, meticulous annotations make it an indispensable addition to collections in film studies and African American studies." -Denise Youngblood, Professor of History, University of Vermont. "The author has taken a unique approach and may have even created a new genre of writing: the interview embellished with scholarly commentary. It is a fascinating experiment. . . This book belongs in every research library and in all public libraries from mid-size to large cities. It fills in lacunae between existing studies." -Peter C. Rollins, Editor-in-Chief of Film & History.

With a common focus on the decisions made by filmmakers, the essays in this collection explore different aspects of the relationship between textual detail and broader conceptual frameworks. These texts reflect not only those areas of film history which have traditionally been explored through mise-en-scène criticism, but also areas such as the avant-garde and television drama which have not tended to receive such detailed investigation. In these ways, the book conducts a series of dialogues with issues in film study which are specifically provoked by close analysis.

From the beginning of the 20th century, Hollywood filmmakers have shaped public beliefs about and attitudes toward African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos. Challenging and updating the historical record, ethnic minority filmmakers have been re-presenting their histories, cultures, and literature from the perspectives of their own experience. The resulting films offer teachers an effective means for teaching ethnic diversity in today's media-saturated culture. This work details rationales and methods for incorporating readily available films into the high school and college undergraduate curriculum, particularly in history, social studies, literature, and film studies courses. It includes definitions of race and ethnicity and essays on the film history of African American, Asian American, American Indian, and Latino representation. Subsequent chapters, organized by disciplines, describe specific ways to teach visual and multicultural literacy with films, including suggestions for topics, methods, and films, and ending with four discipline-specific curriculum units for high school students. Film terminology and a list of resources to help teachers create their own curriculum units complete the work.

A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE • ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.” —Shondaland This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and Showdown. Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation—which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster—Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes. He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves—including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others. An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship—in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film—and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: "the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert." As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do.