Black Lenses, Black Voices

African American Film Now

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects African American Studies All Subjects Cinema & Media studies Cinema studies

by Mark Reid

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Due/Published June 2005, 144 pages, paper

ISBN 0742526429

Black Lenses, Black Voices is a provocative look at films directed and written‹and sometimes produced‹by African Americans, as well as black-oriented films whose directors or screenwriters are not black. Mark Reid shows how certain films dramatize the contemporary African American community as a politically and economically diverse group, vastly different from film representations of the 1960s. Taking us through the development of African American independent filmmaking before and after World War II, he then illustrates the unique nature of African American family, action, horror, female-centered, and independent films, such as Eve's Bayou, Jungle Fever, Shaft, Souls of Sin, Bones, Waiting to Exhale, Monster's Ball, Sankofa, and many more.