필름 포럼이 2020년 1월 17일부터 2월 13일까지 할리우드 80년 흑인여성 영화를 집중 조명하는 영화제 'Black Women'을 연다.

 

BLACK WOMEN

Trailblazering African American Actresses & Images, 1920-2001

'바람과 함께 사라지다'에서 비비안 리와 공연한 해티 맥다니엘은 오스카 여우조연상을 수상했다. 

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939, Victor Fleming), Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel (Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress; first African American nominee and winner)

60-FILM, FOUR WEEK FESTIVAL SPOTLIGHTS DOROTHY DANDRIDGE, ETHEL WATERS, HATTIE McDANIEL, JOSEPHINE BAKER, CICELY TYSON, LENA HORNE, LOUISE BEAVERS, PAM GRIER, ANGELA BASSETT, THERESA HARRIS, FREDI WASHINGTON, DIANA ROSS, DIAHANN CARROLL, PEARL BAILEY, WHOOPI GOLDBERG, WHITNEY HOUSTON, HALLE BERRY, MANY OTHERS!

 

SPECIAL EVENTS INCLUDE TRIBUTES TO ELLA FITZGERALD, BILLIE HOLIDAY, AND PEARL BOWSER, AND “BROWN SUGAR,” PRESENTED BY DONALD BOGLE;

AT FILM FORUM, JANUARY 17 – FEBRUARY 13

 

BLACK WOMEN, an epic series spotlighting over 80 years of trailblazing African American actresses and images in American movies, will run at Film Forum from Friday, January 17 to Thursday, February 13.

“BLACK WOMEN shines a light on the sometimes under-appreciated African American female figures of cinema: the actresses, the roles, the images, the personas – historical milestones and indelible landmarks. Built in is an awareness of the decades-long struggles of Black actresses to find significant work – and of sometimes not so much playing roles as playing against their roles to come up with insightful, illuminating, even subversive performances that can still excite us today.”

 

So says film historian and festival programmer Donald Bogle, the leading authority on African American images in American movies. His first book Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films is a seminal work on the subject and is widely used in colleges, universities, and cultural centers throughout the country. Mr. Bogle’s other books include: Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood, Brown Sugar: Eighty Years of America’s Black Female Superstars, Blacks in American Film and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television, and bestselling biographies of African American icons Dorothy Dandridge and Ethel Waters, both featured prominently in the Film Forum festival. His most recent book is the lavishly illustrated and celebrated Hollywood Black: The Stars, the Films, the Filmmakers. Mr. Bogle teaches film history at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the University of Pennsylvania.

Ina Archer, who served as consultant to the festival, is a filmmaker, visual artist, programmer and writer whose multimedia works and films have been shown nationally. She is the former co-chair of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund and former faculty at Parsons School of Design at The New School. Ina earned a BFA in Film/Video from RISD and a Master’s in Cinema Studies at NYU focusing on race, preservation, technology, and early sound film. Ms. Archer, who at Film Forum last year presented a compilation of vaudeville shorts featuring African American artists, will present a tribute to archivist Pearl Bowser as a special event in the series (see below).

“I’m happy to participate in this unique cinematic convening of Black actresses,” says Archer. “It just begins to display the breadth of talent of Black women as they craft indelible film performances over decades. It’s a wonderful opportunity to appreciate Black women’s artistry in front of the camera. There are great character and comic actors like (Oscar winner) Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, and Moms Mabley; performers trained at the Actors Studio, like Ruby Dee, and independent film makers/actresses from the silent period and from the Black film renaissance in the 1990s like Alice B. Russell and Cheryl Dunye. Inspired by the career and filmmaking of Pearl Bowser, I’m looking forward to presenting rarely seen early films by important filmmakers like Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye, and the less widely known editor, Hortense ‘Tee’ Beveridge.”

The festival includes Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning performances by Black women, beginning with Hattie McDaniel, who in 1939 became both the first Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning African American actress, for her supporting role in Gone with the Wind, and Dorothy Dandridge, who in 1954 was the first African American actress ever nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for her riveting performance in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones. Other Oscar nominees and/or winners highlighted in the series includes Cicely Tyson, Ethel Waters, Diana Ross, Angela Bassett, Diahann Carroll, Oprah Winfrey, Juanita Moore, Whoopi Goldberg (Winner, Best Supporting Actress for Ghost (1990)), and Halle Berry (first African American actress to win Best Actress for Monster’s Ball).

This festival features silent screen African American actresses, including Evelyn Preer in Within Our Gates and Iris Hall in The Symbol of the Unconquered, both directed by the pioneering Oscar Micheaux; following through with the arrival of Hollywood’s first Black love goddess, Nina Mae McKinney in King Vidor’s early 1929 talkie Hallelujah; and moving forward with the heartfelt performances of Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington in the fascinating original 1934 Imitation of Life; Josephine Baker in the French films Zou Zou and Princess Tam Tam; to performances by such notable stars as Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Eartha Kitt, Rosalinda Cash, Diana Sands, Abbey Lincoln, Gloria Foster, Vonetta McGee, Alfre Woodard, Lonette McKee, Lynn Whitfield, Janet Jackson, Tyra Ferrell, Queen Latifah, the gritty, supremely assertive Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson, and goddess of the 1990s Whitney Houston.

Some films in the series are rarely seen such as Pinky and The Member of the Wedding, both starring Ethel Waters; Amazing Grace, with the one-and-only Jackie “Moms” Mabley; the Maya Angelou-written Georgia, Georgia, starring Diana Sands and Minnie Gentry. Other films had a great cultural impact when originally released such as Sounder with Cicely Tyson, Lady Sings the Blues with Diana Ross, and Claudine with Diahann Carroll – each earning Oscar nominations for their female stars.

Also featured are later films, including What’s Love Got to Do with It with Angela Bassett and Monster’s Ball. BLACK WOMEN also spotlights directors, including Julie Dash’s searing Daughters of the Dust; Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou; Maya Angelou’s Down in the Delta; Leslie Harris’ Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., Kathleen Collins’ Losing Ground, starring Seret Scott, and Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman. https://filmforum.org/coming_soon

Special Events in the series include:

 

Wednesday, January 22 at 4:20 & 8:10

“BROWN SUGAR”

Presented by Donald Bogle

Bogle, author of the classic book Brown Sugar: Over One Hundred Years of America’s Black Female Superstars, presents this compilation of rare footage spanning five decades, featuring Ethel Waters, Dorothy Dandridge, Adelaide Hall, Maxine Sullivan, Hazel Scott, Lena Horne, Marie Bryant, Carmen McRae, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, and many others. Compiled by Donald Bogle and Bruce Goldstein.

 

Friday, January 24 at 3:00 & 7:10

A TRIBUTE TO PEARL BOWSER

Presented by Ina Archer

Filmmaker, scholar, preservationist and collector Pearl Bowser was among the earliest proponents of reviving critical interest in the “race movies” of Oscar Micheaux and other early African American filmmakers, linking them to more contemporary work. This unique compilation from Bowser’s collection (donated to the Smithsonian in 2012) includes short films by Julie Dash, Chenzira, Cheryl Dunne, and Bowser herself.

 

Monday, January 27 at 2:20 & 6:40

ELLA SINGS THE GERSHWIN SONG BOOK

Presented by Will Friedwald

A reprise of our acclaimed compilation of rare concert footage of the First Lady of Song, Ella Fitzgerald, performing George and Ira Gershwin classics, both solo and alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Sammy Davis Jr., et al. Presented by Wall Street Journal jazz critic and historian Will Friedwald. Produced by Bruce Goldstein.

 

Sunday February 9 at 1:45 & Monday, February 10 at 3:00

THE COMPLETE BILLIE HOLIDAY

Presented by Will Friedwald

The great Billie Holiday has been held up as an icon of both gender and racial oppression. But this collection of her film and television appearances, presented by Wall Street Journal columnist and jazz historian Will Friedwald, reminds us that she was also quite possibly the most emotionally-charged and thoroughly musical singer in all of jazz. With appearances by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Lester Young, and Count Basie.

 

Says Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s Repertory Program Director, who first collaborated on a Black women festival with Bogle in 1989, “Our first series focused strictly on the great icons of an earlier Hollywood, but this time we decided to take the subject right into the modern era. So many extraordinary Black actresses have come on the scene in the last 30 years; Donald and Ina have taken great pains to make sure that most of them – if not all – are represented alongside Dorothy Dandridge, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne, and other African American icons.”

BLACK WOMEN is programmed by Donald Bogle with Ina Archer.