Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1 Early African-American Film Companies
Foster Photoplay Company's Black Comedies
Lincoln Motion Picture's Black Family Films
Oscar Micheaux and Black Action Films
The Decline of the Indies

2 African-American Comedy Film
Blackface Minstrelsy Processes of Production and
Reception
Hybrid Minstrelsy and Black Employment as Comic
Types
Hybrid Minstrel Film
Satiric Hybrid Minstrelsy
Satiric Hybrid Minstrel Film
Toward a Critical Theory of African-American Film

3 Family Film: Black Writers in Hollywood
Literary Forces Encouraging the Use of Black
Writers
Take a Giant Step
Race, Sexuality, and a Black Matinee Idol
A Raisin in the Sun
Textual Dialogue in A Raisin in the Sun

4 Black Action Film
From Bitterness to Anger
Black Power and Urban Revolts
The Making of a Hero Called Sweetback
The Studio-Produced Black Action Film

5 Black Comedy on the Verge of a Genre Breakdown
She's Gatta Have It
School Daze
Do the Right Thing

6 Black Feminism and the Independent Film
Black Womanism as a Form of Resistance
Reception: Resistance, Accommodation, Assimilation
Black Womanist Film Praxis
The Womanist Film and the Black Professional

7 Male-Directed New Black Independent Cinema

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Index of Film Titles

About the Author

Mark A. Reid is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He has written extensively on black cinema.

Reviews

"Redefining Black Film reorganizes our understanding of black cinematic history and forces us to look at it with new eyes."
*Cinéaste*

"Redefining Black Film reorganizes our understanding of black cinematic history and forces us to look at it with new eyes." * Cineaste *

Though often academically impenetrable, this ``feminist-Marxist-black cultural'' overview is useful for its strong criticism of how studio-produced films about blacks, even those directed by African Americans like Spike Lee and Melvin Van Peebles, offer ``tendentious images of blacks.'' After examining the work of early-20th-century black filmmakers such as Bill Foster and Oscar Micheaux, Reid, who teaches English at the University of Florida, explains how minstrel comedy became part of successful black comedies of the 1970s, in which politically aware comedians like Dick Gregory transmuted the black character from object to subject. In a look at black family films, Reid suggests that A Raisin in the Sun managed to incorporate black feminism and pan-Africanism; he also argues that black viewers have not always been receptive to the violent and misogynistic fantasies of black action films. Reid attacks Spike Lee's lack of sociopolitical analysis and his ``simulated form of blackness'' and concludes by analyzing the achievements and challenges facing independent black filmmakers, who in his view are best able to explore serious issues. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Mar.)