Black Camera最新文献

{"title":"Dune (review)","authors":"Fabio Bego","doi":"10.2979/blc.2023.a883822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blc.2023.a883822","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Dune Fabio Bego (bio) Directed by Denis Villeneuve, performances by Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, and Oscar Isaac, 2021. 156 mins. Denis Villeneuve’s film Dune (2021) provides interesting insight on how notions of race, gender, and empire that are at the core of current post-colonial critique are being transferred into popular culture. Analyses of the short- and long-term consequences of colonialism in the contemporary world pervade public discourse in shows and documentaries for mainstream media, blockbuster movies, institutionally financed film festivals, and art exhibitions. From a political perspective it is possible to distinguish two broad approaches. On the one hand there is a critique from the left which is focused on the deconstruction of race and ethnicity. On the other hand, there is a critique from the far right that aims at restoring race and ethnic divisions and privileges which were presumably spoiled by “globalization” or “communism.” Without wanting to draw strict lines between the two political orientations of current postcolonial critique, in this review I argue that Dune squarely falls into the second category. I became interested in this film after reading some positive comments on Italian far right blogs. To understand the reasons why fascists appreciated this film, I take a look at Dune through the book Revolt Against the Modern World, by Italian racist and fascist philosopher Julius Evola. The book was originally published in 1934 but is still a major reference for fascists around the world.1 In order to highlight the analogies between the book and Dune’s anti-imperialist discourse, it is necessary to present the basic concepts of Evola’s ideas of empire. Evola thought that world history evolved around the dialectic between a supernatural order and a worldly or inferior order. He identified the supernatural order with the term “tradition.” Evola affirmed that traditional societies were organized according to races, caste systems, and sexes. This form of organization allowed societies to live harmoniously, although not peacefully, according to their status. The decay of traditional values and hierarchies led to the advent of the inferior order. This is the reason why modern societies are dominated by greed and individualistic interests. Evola affirms that the [End Page 404] supernatural order is ruled by men and has a masculine character whereas the inferior order has a feminine character. Drawing on this division, Evola defines two types of empires. The traditional empire, where the emperor has authority because he is sacred, and modern imperialism where the ruler has lost his sacredness and can obtain authority only with violence. Evola associates the term imperialism to the expansion of Western European states in the modern era and affirms that Europeans have destroyed the traditional societies that they colonized. He also believed that modern slavery in North America has been much crueller than the s","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dossier: Spectacles of Anti-Black Violence and Contemporary Black Horror","authors":"Lauren McLeod Cramer, Catherine Zimmer","doi":"10.2979/blc.2023.a883820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blc.2023.a883820","url":null,"abstract":"Dossier: Spectacles of Anti-Black Violence and Contemporary Black Horror Lauren McLeod Cramer (bio) and Catherine Zimmer (bio) This dossier gathers key questions, concepts, and resources for artists, scholars, teachers, curators, and admirers of contemporary black horror films. The form and content of each of its sections offers a way to think about the intersection of blackness, spectacle, and cinema as a point of collaborative thinking, aesthetic connection, and citational practice: • Section 1: A Conversation between the Authors • Section 2: The Sunken Places Image Gallery • And finally, Section 3: A Resource List for Study and/or Teaching [End Page 319] 1. A Conversation between the Authors Almost a year to the day the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a global pandemic we hosted “Spectacles of Anti-Black Violence: Teaching Horror ‘With Everything Going on Right Now,’” a seminar at the 2021 Society for Cinema and Media Studies (virtual) conference that focused on topics both authors regularly address in our research and teaching: blackness and anti-blackness, visuality, genre, and popular culture. Yet, what is hopefully evident in the session’s title, is an unease around these topics as they straddle the unresolved space between theory and practice, which is exactly the place where the current cycle of horror films largely driven by black directors and producers render the “atmospheric” violence of anti-blackness on screen and invite audiences to consider the spectacularization of black pain, trauma, and death.1 In turn, we invited our disciplinary community to join us for a conversation that began with a claim: films and shows like Them (2021), Us (dir. Jordan Peele, 2019), and Suicide by Sunlight (dir. Nikyatu Jusu, 2018) are about a black lived experience and, no matter how fantastic, supernatural, temporally or spatially distant the story is, they are also about us—film scholars, teachers, and makers. The seminar description begins, Asked to identify the genre of Get Out (2017), director Jordan Peele famously referred to the film as a “documentary.”2 The comment acknowledges his audiences’ multiple realities, that some were experiencing the inventiveness of this film as a new and exciting development in the genre and others were viewing it as a surprisingly literal rendering of their everyday lives. Peele’s “joke” about film genre feels directed towards those who remain attached to these categorical distinctions because, of course, an exploration of anti-blackness is well within the “the nature of horror.”3 Yet, visualizing the legacy of slavery in literally monstrous form is only an uncanny return of America’s repressed—if anything about Get Out actually feels distant or past.4 Instead, the film relishes the cinematic and actual familiarity of its characters’ postracial performance, which is evident in its quotability (“I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could”). To call the film a “documentary” does not change anything abou","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editor’s Notes","authors":"","doi":"10.2979/blc.2023.a883802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blc.2023.a883802","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“That’s the Difference, I Am Fully Engaged With Art”: Renée Baker on the Practice of Scoring Silent Film and the Matter of “Race Movies”","authors":"Michael T. Martin","doi":"10.2979/blc.2023.a883805","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blc.2023.a883805","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This lengthy conversation with Renée Baker engages with her multi-modal practice as a visual artist and composer of sound scores for silent films, particularly the “race movies” Body and Soul (dir. Oscar Micheaux, 1925) , The Scar of Shame (dir. Frank Peregini, 1927), and Borderline (dir. Kenneth MacPherson, 1930). Baker contends that these films render more complex and nuanced readings of black life and community than Hollywood renderings and that they contributed to the recovery of Black history .","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Filming Social Death and the Fixed Position of Blackness: On L.A. Rebellion Director Julie Dash’s Four Women","authors":"Rachal Burton","doi":"10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:During the late 1970s and early 1980s, critically acclaimed Black auteur Julie Dash wrote, assisted with, and directed films while attending the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Film School. At UCLA, Dash participated in the L.A. Rebellion, a group of Black filmmakers who sought to make independent cinematic productions that subverted racist images of Black people that often appeared on mainstream Hollywood screens. In this way, the L.A. Rebellion’s filmography and, specifically, the group’s distinctive narrative form and style, is central to the Black indie movement. Dash therefore currently occupies a unique and highly esteemed place in the history of American film. Her most famous works—her UCLA thesis production, Illusions (1982), and her theatrical feature, Daughters of the Dust (1991)—have become celebrated for their narratives centered on Black women as well as their implicit critiques of Hollywood and slavery, respectively. In this article, I examine Dash’s Project One UCLA student production, Four Women (1975), to argue that her Black characters are positioned by what sociologist Orlando Patterson calls social death. Most broadly, I argue that Dash employs narrative strategies and cinematic style to highlight the fixed position of Blackness from slavery to the present era, while also illustrating the consumption of racist stereotypes vis-à-vis Black women in American culture and society.","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43444249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Protesting on Screen: Black Protest Films in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter","authors":"J. Hope","doi":"10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.07","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the recent (2012–2019) work of Black filmmakers, television show runners, and directors whose aim is to directly engage and bring attention to the #blacklivesmatter movement through film by staging protest scenes in their work. Melina Matsoukas and Lena Waithe’s feature film Queen & Slim (2019), George Tillman Jr.’s The Hate U Give (2018), and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) will serve as the anchoring texts for this article. The films were marketed as “a Black Lives Matter picture,” “protest art,” and “a Black Lives Matter odyssey” because of their explicit tackling of police brutality, state-sanctioned violence, critique of racial capitalism, and ability to challenge notions of criminality and justice.Throughout this article I will argue that in seeking to stage protests, Black film-makers have often produced “protest art” that is hollow, misguided, not movement-aligned, and fails to call for action or provide any substantive message for a nascent movement. Beyond examining the protest scenes themselves, this work also delves into how these films as a whole signify two leading and arguably intersecting schools of thought—Afro-Pessimism and Afrofuturism. I consider how salient narratives of nihilism and anti-Black violence animates the work of Afro-Pessimists. Conversely, I look at how these texts both include and at times lack narratives of what Fred Moten describes as “Black optimism,” escapism, and solidarity. Overall, this work considers the question, how can we create protest art that tends to the realities of anti-Blackness, while simultaneously challenging us to reimagine a new collective future, through Black resistance and protest, that is explicitly for us and by us?","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46799502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PROFESSIONAL NOTES AND RESEARCH RESOURCES","authors":"Lorraine Madway","doi":"10.2979/blackcamera.7.2.255","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.7.2.255","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48172782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Jew, the Arab, the Black: La Haine and the Structure of Anti-Black Violence","authors":"R. Cherian","doi":"10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.12","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay places Gilles Deleuze’s work on cinema and psychoanalysis in conversation with critical Black studies through an interrogation of the film La Haine (1995, France), directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. I argue that while the action and dialogue that construct La Haine convey a progressive, perhaps even apparently radical, critique of race and policing towards the embrace of a multiracial coalition politics, the cinematic structure of La Haine administers what Deleuze calls a shock to thought that reveals the anti-Black structure of not simply European civil society, but the anti-Black relations among its historical and timeless Others—the Jew, the Arab, and the Black—such that the political desires and aspirations portrayed in the dialogue are rendered untenable through the cinematic structure. In other words, the critique of civil society La Haine offers on the level of structure and composition is one that exceeds and undermines any conscious desire for love, reparation, or coalition. By problematizing ethno-religious categories deployed by Kassovitz, the essay briefly asks how the representation of “religious” and “racial” bodies in La Haine operates within the same biocentric logic of the modern state to the extent that it represses the historico-material and psycho-affective origins of Jewish, Arab, and Black Enmity with regard to secular civil society and the Human. If so, then while Kassovitz’s best efforts to create a narrative arc and recuperative gesture toward reconciliation and redemption between the multiracial coalition of people and the police ultimately collapse into the flatline of anti-Blackness, the impossible reconciliation between the Black and secular civil society does not foreclose, following Selamawit Terrefe, the confluence and unflinching embrace of monstrosity, hatred, and enmity among the human’s familiar and radical Others—the so-called Jew, Arab, and Black.","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48607453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exploring African Women’s Cinematic Practice as Womanist Practice","authors":"Beti Ellerson","doi":"10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.20","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.20","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42969769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Slavery and the Ambiguities of Diaspora in Haile Gerima’s Sankofa","authors":"Xavier Lee","doi":"10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.14.2.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this essay, I question how the Ethiopian-American director Haile Gerima theorizes diaspora in his 1993 historical drama Sankofa. By reading against the grain of the film’s ideological project of reconciling the trauma and indignity of African slavery in the New World, I consider how Sankofa’s investments in a transhistorical account of race underpin its mission to remind the black descendants of enslaved Africans of their ancestors’ inalienable human dignity. While Sankofa endeavors to draw African and African diasporic histories closer by dramatizing “return” at Cape Coast Castle in southern Ghana, the film’s attention to its diasporic audience omits African experiences of the slave trade and creates a notably ambiguous relationship between diaspora, slavery, and the filmmaker’s distinct idea of Africa.","PeriodicalId":42749,"journal":{"name":"Black Camera","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49194728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}