Black Women Directors

By Christina N. Baker

Black women have long recognized the power of film for storytelling. For far too long, however, the cultural and historical narratives about film have not accounted for the contributions of Black women directors. This book remedies this omission by highlighting the trajectory of the culturally significant work of Black women directors in the United States, from the under-examined pioneers of the silent era, to the documentarians who sought to highlight the voices and struggles of Black women, and the contemporary Black women directors in Hollywood.  Applying a Black feminist perspective, this book examines the ways that Black women filmmakers have made a way for themselves and their work by resisting the dominant cultural expectations for Black women and for the medium of film, as a whole.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Release date: Mar 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781978813359

Christina N. Baker

Christina N. Baker is associate professor of critical race and ethnic studies at University of California, Merced. She is author of Contemporary Black Women Filmmakers and the Art of Resistance, the first book-length analysis of representations of Black femaleness in the feature films of Black women filmmakers. Her work has been published in such journals as Sex Roles: A Journal of Research; Social Psychology of Education; Journal of College Student Development; the Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education; and Women, Gender, and Families of Color.

Book preview

BLACK WOMEN DIRECTORS

QUICK TAKES: MOVIES AND POPULAR CULTURE

Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture is a series offering succinct overviews and high-quality writing on cutting-edge themes and issues in film studies. Authors offer both fresh perspectives on new areas of inquiry and original takes on established topics.

SERIES EDITORS:

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is Willa Cather Professor of English and teaches film studies in the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Wheeler Winston Dixon is the James Ryan Endowed Professor of Film Studies and professor of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

Christina N. Baker,

Black Women Directors

Rebecca Bell-Metereau,

Transgender Cinema

Blair Davis, Comic Book Movies

Jonna Eagle, War Games

Carmelo Esterrich,

Star Wars Multiverse

Lester D. Freidman,

Sports Movies

Steven Gerrard, The Modern

British Horror Film

Desirée J. Garcia,

The Movie Musical

Barry Keith Grant,

Monster Cinema

Julie Grossman,

The Femme Fatale

Daniel Herbert,

Film Remakes and Franchises

Ian Olney, Zombie Cinema

Valérie K. Orlando,

New African Cinema

Carl Plantinga,

Alternative Realities

Stephen Prince, Digital Cinema

Stephen Prince,

Apocalypse Cinema

Dahlia Schweitzer,

L.A. Private Eyes

Dahlia Schweitzer,

Haunted Homes

Steven Shaviro,

Digital Music Videos

David Sterritt, Rock ’n’ Roll Movies

John Wills, Disney Culture

Black Women Directors

CHRISTINA N. BAKER

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Baker, Christina N., author.

Title: Black women directors / Christina N. Baker.

Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021031067 | ISBN 9781978813342 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978813335 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978813359 (epub) | ISBN 9781978813366 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978813373 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: African American women motion picture producers and directors—Biography. | Motion pictures—United States—History. | Motion picture industry—United States—History.

Classification: LCC PN1998.2 .B348 2022 | DDC 791.4302/80922 [B]—dc23/eng/20211027

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031067

A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Copyright © 2022 by Christina N. Baker

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is fair use as defined by U.S. copyright law.

References to internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

www.rutgersuniversitypress.org

Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Recognizing the Pioneers

2. Women of the L.A. Rebellion

3. Moving into the Mainstream

4. More than Mainstream

Acknowledgments

Further Reading

Notes

Bibliography

Selected Filmography

Index

About the Author

BLACK WOMEN DIRECTORS

INTRODUCTION

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation [that] always seems fraught with danger.

—Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

Wholeness is no trifling matter.

—Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

The sentiments behind Audre Lorde’s declaration and Toni Cade Bambara’s insight exemplify the determination of Black feminist artists and intellectuals who have fought courageously for the liberation that accompanies free artistic expression. In this book, I contribute to the growing body of work that recognizes the overlooked contributions of Black women who have engaged in the creative act of filmmaking. With the words of Black feminist thinkers such as Lorde, Bambara, Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, and Alice Walker as guides, I highlight how Black feminist strategies and perspectives emanate from the films of Black women directors, with a focus on films created in the United States.

The discussion is organized chronologically—from the silent era of filmmaking through the present blend of theatrical, streaming, commercial, and independent cinema options. Chapter 1 starts by remedying the common misconception that there were no Black women directors during the silent era. Black male filmmakers have recently been rediscovered and justly credited for their important work on the many race films of the silent era, yet the work of some of the first Black women directors from the early to mid-twentieth century has gone largely unrecognized. The chapter also discusses the films of Black women directors in the mid- to late twentieth century, commencing with an overview of Madeline Anderson and Camille Billops, two of the first Black women to create feature-length documentaries, and rounding out the discussion with Kathleen Collins and Jessie Maple, who were among the first women to make feature-length narrative films (in the 1980s). Overall, the chapter captures the diversity of approaches among Black women directors before their films were widely distributed commercially.

Chapter 2 expands on the contributions of Black women directors during the second half of the twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the women who attended film school at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) between the late 1960s and mid-1980s. This group of Black students, which came to be known as the L.A. Rebellion, included Julie Dash, Alile Sharon Larkin, Zeinabu irene Davis, and many others.

Chapters 3 and 4 examine the work of Black women who made films for commercial theatrical distribution, beginning with some of the first Black women to do so: Euzhan Palcy, Julie Dash, and Kasi Lemmons. I emphasize the goal of moving forward and carving out significant spaces for Black women in the film industry, centering on the career of Ava DuVernay in chapter 4.

Recalling Bambara’s insistence that wholeness is no trifling matter, this book offers a succinct overview of Black women directors. It does not represent the entirety of their vast and complex contributions, but I hope it will serve as a jumping-off point for an exploration of the extensive and exceptional work of Black women directors, as part of the process of achieving a more holistic cultural understanding and appreciation of Black womanhood.

1

RECOGNIZING THE PIONEERS

Forgotten is the word used in a 2017 article to describe Black women in film during the early to mid-twentieth century.¹ The forgotten Black women of early Hollywood were the focal point of an exhibit titled Center Stage: African American Women in Silent Race Films.² It is laudable that this exhibit recognized many previously overlooked silent films and some of the Black women who starred in them, including Evelyn Preer, Iris Hall, Anita Thompson, Lucia Lynn Moses, and Cathryn Caviness. These women had essentially been forgotten. But the list of filmmakers featured in the exhibit—Oscar Micheaux, Harry Gant, David Starkman, and Spencer Williams—highlights the fact that although Black women actors were remembered for their important work in front of the camera, Black women filmmakers of that era were still forgotten.

In this chapter, I navigate the maze and roadblocks constructed around the work of Black women directors in the silent era and beyond. Given the structural and cultural barriers confronting Black women, the powerful action of telling stories through film was inherently courageous. The word womanist may not have been part of the lexicon during this period, but I posit that the work of these Black women reflects a womanist point of view. As Alice Walker explains in her 1983 collection of essays titled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, the term womanist applies to a feminist of color and stems from the southern colloquial term womanish, which usually refers to behavior that is outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful.³ The mere fact that Black women of this era defied cultural norms and picked up a camera to tell stories demonstrates a level of ingenuity that is emblematic of the womanish characteristics described by Walker.

In some cases, the search for a complete picture of Black women’s historical contributions to film led to more questions than answers. As such, it is telling that there is no clear answer to the question, Who was the first Black woman filmmaker? Due to the relative lack of support for Black women and the accompanying dearth of historical documents, pinpointing a definitive answer has been difficult. The elusive nature of this answer makes each and every piece of evidence all the more precious. Part of the challenge of identifying the first Black woman filmmaker involves another question: What qualifies someone as a filmmaker? To the latter question, I wholeheartedly concur with the film scholar Gloria Gibson, who writes about the early work of Black women filmmakers, The designation of filmmaker comes not in the number of frames, but in the women’s realization and utilization of the power of the camera.⁴

THE SILENT ERA

In this section, I consider some of the first Black women to realize and utilize the power of the camera during the silent era. Recent scholarly attention has been directed toward Oscar Micheaux (generally accepted as the first Black film director) and his significant contributions and interventions as a filmmaker,⁵ but the goal of locating and recognizing the contributions of his female counterparts has been much less straightforward.⁶ Eloyce King Patrick Gist, Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Eslanda Robeson, Alice B. Russell, Tressie Souders, Madame E. Toussaint Welcome, Maria P. Williams, and Zora Neale Hurston (who achieved posthumous fame as a novelist) are some of the underrecognized Black women who made invaluable contributions to silent film as writers, directors, and producers.⁷

I focus my discussion on Tressie Souders, Madame E. Toussaint Welcome, Eloyce King Patrick Gist, and Zora Neale Hurston, who are among the first Black women credited