Black women filmmakers


Black women filmmakers have faced both race and gender disparity in their field; despite challenges, however, notable contributions have been made throughout the history of film by black women who have broken through the celluloid ceiling to become pioneers in filmmaking.

Black women filmmakers

The film industry has been difficult for black women to break into. According to Nsenga Burton, writer for The Root, "the film industry remains overwhelmingly white and male."
In her book Black Women Film and Video Artists, Jacqueline Bobo notes that "there is a substantial body of work created by Black women film/video makers, extending back to the early part of this century. Unfortunately, the work is overlooked not only by many distributors, but also by critical reviews and scholarly analyses, with the notable exception of those by Black women scholars, have been few and far between."
One of the issues concerning the involvement of Black females in film making is not simply the involvement or lack in numbers, but the influence given to them. As Ada Gay Griffin examines in Seizing the Moving Image the issues in telling a Black story in film cannot be resolved by adding a couple of black actors or hiring black crews to produce the film, but by seizing control of the image as Griffin argues and this is done by gaining production ownership of the films which can be done by Black women gaining more Studio Executive positions in the film industry which is severely lacking. Therefore, when looking at Hollywood's industry Black women filmmakers become the most unnoticeable, they become existent only in the periphery of the industry. In other words, it may be somewhat apparent that Black women filmmakers are small in numbers but the fact of the matter is that there are many black woman filmmakers that are actively contributing to the film industry.
Jacqueline Bobo, an associate professor in the women's studies program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, argues that the general public sees Black women's works as small, irregular works of interest to small circle of intimate friends.

History

Jacqueline Bobo establishes that black women filmmakers have been productive throughout the twentieth century. Dating back to the 1900s, black women filmmakers have created a Genesis of a Tradition. Through Gloria J Gibson-Hudson's essay titled "The Ties That Bind: Cinematic Representations By Black Women Filmmakers," she notes that these black women have developed a framework or "commonalities" that evolved from social and historical circumstances.

1900s

1910s

Documentation exists of Black women producing and directing films during the prolific interim of Black film production from 1910 through the 1920s. Archivist and film scholar Pearl Bowser notes that Black women worked behind the camera on numerous films during this time on what were known as race films, that is, independent films produced by Black filmmakers, rather than white-controlled films about Black life. Historical records show that two women were especially noteworthy in filmmaking during this period. Madame C.J. Walker, one of the first Black millionaires, made her fortune manufacturing and distributing cosmetics and hair-care products for Black women. In addition to her retail business, Walker owned the Walker Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana and produced training and promotional films about her cosmetics factory. The theater still stands today and was recently purchased by IUPUI for renovations. These films, Bowser declares, "offered a visual record of women's work history" and the "development of cottage Industries." Bowser also points to the importance of Madam Toussaint Welcome, Booker T. Washington's personal photographer, who produced at least one film about Black soldiers who fought in World War I.

1920s

There are disputes concerning whom the first black women filmmaker is.
Tressie Souders wrote, directed and produced a feature film called A Woman's Error in 1922. The film was hailed by the black press as "“the first of its kind to be produced by a young woman of our race.”
Zora Neale Hurston, best known for her novels including the renowned Their Eyes Were Watching God, was also a folklorist who created work centering on ethnographic films, she earned her MA in Cultural Anthropology at Columbia University. Hurston created the film Children's Games in 1928, which is the first non-silent film to be directed by a black woman. Hurston lived from 1891–1960, and her plays and scripts have been preserved by the Library of Congress. Hurston was trained as an anthropologist, and created documentaries, particularly about the lives of black people in the south.
Eloyce King Patrick Gist produced short religious films with her husband James Gist, including the 16mm silent motion pictureHell Bound Train, which preaches temperance. Eloyce Gist's work had a spiritual mission and "remains unique in its explicitly non-theatrical definition and its purpose as a tool for moral education and social uplift."

1930s

1940s

, better known as author of Paul Robeson, Negro , the biography of her husband, and the travelogue African Journey , shot ethnographic film footage during the 40s. This material is held by the Library of Congress but, as of 2012, is not available for public screening due to fragile condition.

1970s

is considered "a trailblazer in the world of nonfiction filmmaking" recognized particularly for I Am Somebody and the earlier A Tribute to Malcolm X .
Safi Faye, a Senegalese film director, was the first Sub-Saharan African woman to direct a commercially distributed feature film, Kaddu Beykat, which was released in 1975.

1980s

wrote, produced and directed, Losing Ground her landmark film, after writing her 1977 manifesto "A Place in Time and Killer of Sheep: Two Radical Definitions of Adventure Minus Women" which "charged that films like Shaft and Superfly did nothing more than reproduce, in a different hue, the phallocentric conventions of white Hollywood cinema".
Euzhan Palcy wrote and directed Sugar Cane Alley her seminal masterpiece and put the French West Indies on the World cinema map.
winning the Silver Lion at the 40th Venice Film Festival in 1983, a first for a black director. The following year, she made history again when she became the first woman and the first black director winner of the Best First Work César Awards
In 1989, she co-wrote and directed A Dry White Season becoming the first black female director produced by a major Hollywood studio Furthermore, Ms. Palcy is the first black woman filmmaker to direct an actor to an Oscar nomination with Marlon Brando being recognized for his performance as Ian McKenzie in A Dry White Season.

1990s

In 1991, Julie Dash became the first black female filmmaker to have a full-length general theatrical release in the US for her film Daughters of the Dust. Considered "an historical marker...suggestive of what will hallmark the next stage of development-a more pronounced diasporic and Afrafemcentic orientation", the film was recognized in 1999 by the 25th annual Newark Black Film Festival as one of the most important cinematic achievements in black cinema in the 20th century. Daughters of the Dust was placed on the National Film Resgistry by the Library of Congress in 2004, making it one of 400 other American-made films that are preserved and protected as national treasures.
In 1996 Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman became the first film directed and written by a Black lesbian to explore Black lesbianism. Dunye's work has been influential in both Black and LGBTQ filmmaking spheres.

2000s

2010s

, a pioneer of black female filmmakers, became the first black woman to win the US Dramatic Directing Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. She received an Oscar nomination for her documentary 13th , and has also made history as the first black woman director to be nominated for a Golden Globe. DuVernay continued her career in filmmaking with A Wrinkle in Time, released in 2018 with an estimated budget surpassing $100 million, making DuVernay the first black female to direct a live-action film with a budget of that size. Recently, she created, co-wrote, produced and directed the Netflix drama limited series When They See Us, based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case, which has earned critical acclaim. The series was nominated for 16 Emmy Awards including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series and won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Limited Series. She is set to direct New Gods, a Warner Bros. and DC Comics film.
Mati Diop, a French-Senegalese director was the first black female filmmaker to be included in the prestigious Cannes Film Festival competition, in 2019. Her film Atlantics was up for the Palme d'Or, the top honor of the Cannes competition.

Selected black women filmmakers and filmography

[Mara Brock Akil]