Black Film and Television

In this collection of essays, contributors explore Griffith's film as text, artifact, and cultural legacy and place it into both the historical and transnational contexts of the first half of the 1900s and its resonances with current events in America, such as #BlackLivesMatter, #HollywoodSoWhite, and #OscarsSoWhite movements.

In the silent era, American cinema was defined by two separate and parallel industries, with white and black companies producing films for their respective, segregated audiences. Jane Gaines's book reconsiders the race films of this era with an ambitious historical and theoretical agenda.

Cedric J. Robinson analyzes theater and film of the early twentieth century. He argues that economic, political, and cultural forces present in the eras of silent film and the early "talkies" firmly entrenched limited representations of African Americans. Covers race films, silent film, and Golden Age films.

This collection brings together many of the world's leading scholars on race and film to re-consider the legacy and impact of D.W. Griffith's deeply racist 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation.

More movies have been produced about the Civil War than about any other aspect of American history. From 1903 (Uncle Tom's Cabin) to the present, film studios have released more than eight hundred silent and sound pictures about the nation's most cataclysmic event. In this comprehensive study, Bruce Chadwick first shows us how historians, journalists, playwrights, poets and novelists of the late nineteenth century-partly as an effort to reconcile former antagonists-rewrote the war's history to create enduring legends, most of which had no basis in reality.

With chapters on the writers, directors, producers, stars, film editors, designers and camera women of the silent era this book acknowledges and celebrates the many talented women who were significantly involved in the rise of the industry and explains why the coming of the talkies and big business led to the inequality which exists today. The book has a chapter titled "Early African-American female filmmakers."

Set against the backdrop of the black struggle in society, Slow Fade to Black is the definitive history of African-American accomplishment in film--both before and behind the camera--from the earliest movies through World War II.

This book includes the entire 20th century through black images in film, from the silent era to the unequaled rise of the new African American cinema and stars of today. From Gone with the Wind and Carmen Jones to Shaft, Do the Right Thing, and Bamboozled, Donald Bogle reveals the way the image of blacks in American cinema has changed--and also the shocking way in which it has often remained the same.