The Oscars Museum Reveals Forgotten African-American Films in Film History
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In Los Angeles, the exhibition Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971 looks back at the key moments in the little-known history of black American cinema, and in particular the hundreds of independent feature films made until the 1960s.
Long before Denzel Washington Where Spike Leegenerations of pioneering and revolutionary black directors have shaped American cinema and sought to combat stereotypes, shows, until April 9, an exhibition from the Oscars museum in Los Angeles.
Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971 looks back at the key moments in the little-known history of black American cinema, and in particular the hundreds of independent feature films made until the 1960s with African-American actors for an African-American audience, called “race movies“, when racial segregation was still in force in the rooms. The exhibit, which spotlights these works largely ignored by major Hollywood studios and audiences of the time, opens with a recently rediscovered reel from 1898 showing two black vaudeville actors embracing. “Are you ready to hear this secret? That we blacks have always been present in American cinema, from the beginning“says the director Ava DuVernay, during a press conference. “Present not as caricatures or stereotypes but as creators, producers, pioneers and enthusiastic spectators“, she adds. “We should have shown this long before.»
“Regenerationis the second major temporary exhibition at the Musée de the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in charge of the Oscars, which has come under heavy criticism in recent years for its lack of diversity. Among the exhibits are jumbled together: the Oscar of Sydney Poitier, first African American to win the prestigious Best Actor statuette in 1964 for Field Lilythe tap dances of the dancing duo the Nicholas Brothers or even a costume worn by Sammy Davis Jr in the film Porgy and Bess.
Trailer Field Lilies
“I was surprised because I was not aware of the existence of these feature films before starting the preparationof this retrospective in 2016 and to explore the archives of the Academy, explains to AFP the curator, Doris Berger. “I wondered, “Why don’t we know anything about this? We should know! ”“, she continues. “They are truly gripping films and proof that African American artists had all types of roles and there were plenty of different stories.“. Audiences can now view the carefully restored footage of works such as the musical western Harlem on the Prairiehorror comedy Mr Washington Goes To Tow or the gangster feature film Dark Manhattan.
But a lot ofrace moviesof which only the promotional posters remain have been lost forever. When Hollywood offered black actors of the time supporting roles in “butlers and mamas (black nanny, often a slave, of wealthy white American families, Editor’s note)“, this type of independent films offered them roles “of lawyers, doctors, nurses and cowboys“, notes Doris Berger. “It’s proof (that Hollywood) could have been so much more diverse and exciting“, she adds. The end of the exhibition focuses on the rise of the “blaxploitation‘, genre of the 70s that put African-American actors in the spotlight, launched by the black director Melvin Van Peebles, who died a few months before the kickoff of Regenerationjust like Sidney Poitier.
Read alsoSidney Poitier is dead, Hollywood loses a new star and a hero of the black cause
Belated but essential tribute
The exhibition is part of an effort by the Academy to respond to criticism of its lack of representativeness, embodied by the #OscarsSoWhite campaign which pointed out in 2015 lack of black performers in Oscar nominations. The institution has since doubled the number of women and people from ethnic minorities among its members.
Beyond informing the general public about “race films”, Regeneration also has the merit of having challenged certain black American directors. “If I had known – about actresses and all that – I would have had a completely different vision and approach to cinema“says director Charles Burnett. “This work had to take place. It is only too late. This is important and essential work“, abounds Ana DuVernay. “This exhibition highlights the generations of black artists whose footsteps we follow“.
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