long Before Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, and even Sidney Poitier, generations of pioneering and revolutionary black American filmmakers helped shape early American cinema and dispel derogatory stereotypes. Played a key role, claims a major new Hollywood exhibition. “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971,” opening Sunday at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, will explore key moments in the history of black cinema that were either ignored or long forgotten by mainstream Hollywood studios and audiences at the time. I’ll pick it up. .
Beginning with the recently rediscovered 1898 reel of two black vaudeville performers, the exhibition tells the little-known history of ‘race cinema’. was racist.
“Are you ready for a secret?” Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay said in a press preview this week that we black people have always been present in American cinema from the beginning. Not as a type, but as a creator, a producer, an innovator and an avid audience, she added, “But today is the beginning.” It is only the second major temporary exhibit to be unveiled at the Academy Museum, which opened last September.
In addition to the historic Oscar loaned by his widow for “Lilies of the Field”, for which Poitier won Best Actor in 1964, the Tap shoes worn by the Nicholas Brothers, the trumpet played by Louis Armstrong and the trumpet worn by Sammy Davis Costumes are on display. Junior from “Porgy and Bess”. Planning for the exhibition dates back to his 2016, when curators delved into the Academy’s vast archives to promote the film in its early days, with blurbs touting an “all-Negro cast” and “a phenomenal all-star Negro film.” It started when I found a poster of him.
“I was surprised because I didn’t know about these films until I started working on this exhibition,” co-curator Doris Berger told AFP. “Why don’t we know about this?” she asked herself. We should know about this! “These are really exciting movies, with African-American performers in roles for all the characters, and it proves that there were a lot of storylines.” I can see!”
“Prairie Harem”
Audiences are discreet about what are now known as “racing movies,” such as the Western musical “Harlem on the Prairie,” the gangster movie “Dark Manhattan,” and the horror-comedy “Mr. Washington Goes to Town.” You can see the video restored to Co-curator Leah Combs said their posters serve as “a sort of vestige of what they were,” but many are also lost forever.
While mainstream Hollywood was casting black actors at the time as “butlers and mothers in supporting roles,” a minority of performers in this independent genre played “lawyers, doctors, nurses and cowboys,” Berger said. said. “So this is evidence that[Hollywood]could have been richer and more exciting.” The gallery, like Poitier, was pioneered by Melvin Van Peebles, who died months before the exhibition opened. , ending with the rise of the braxploitation genre in the early 1970s. “I hope they are very proud of this exhibition,” Combs told AFP.
“expired”
The exhibition is an important event for the Academy, which in recent years has had to deal with accusations of a lack of racial diversity. The group was also smitten with criticism for his lack of Black Oscar nominees during the #OscarsSoWhite movement that began in 2015. Since then, she has fulfilled a pledge to double her number of women and minority members by 2020.
In addition to educating the general public, the work unearthed by Rebirth has even astounded modern leading black filmmakers. Director Charles Burnett said, “I was surprised… I didn’t know about this.” ” DuVernay added: Expired. It’s important, it’s important work. “This exhibition showcases a generation of black artists [on] We stand on its shoulders.” – AFP
