#5 - Black Film Archive
This is Film! 2024 #5: Black Film Archive
For the fifth session of This is Film! we invite Maya Cade to talk about the Black Film Archive, an ever-evolving online archive of Black films made from 1898 to 1989. Screening programme: Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis, 1996).
The Black Film Archive, founded by Maya Cade in 2021, is an ever-evolving archive of Black films made from 1898 to 1989. By showcasing historically and culturally significant films on the archive’s website, Cade hopes to make black film history as accessible as possible.
All films collected on Black Film Archive have something significant to say about the Black experience, speak to Black audiences, and/or have a Black star, writer, producer, or director. The films should be considered in conversation with each other, as visions of Black being on film across time. They express what only film can: social, anthropological, and aesthetic looks at the changing face of Black expression (or white attitudes about Black expression, which are inescapable given the whiteness of decision-makers in the film industry).
In this lecture, Maya Cade will discuss how Black film as a genre bends conventions and expectations, and resists categorisation. Through the Black Film Archive, Cade hopes to consider the expansive archive of radical ideas and expression found in Black films’ past.
This session will be moderated by Kate Saccone, PhD-researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
Programme
Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis, US 90’, 1996)
Cece (Jake-Ann Jones) is an aspiring actress and daughter of Lydia Love – a Pam Grier-like actress– returning home for the first time in years. In the initial confrontation with her mother, CeCe proclaims her desire to play ‘tasteful’ roles unlike those that Lydia had her on the set of throughout her childhood. The newly-thinner, budding star soon finds that she cannot outpace her insecurities… until she reclaims her own voice.
The daring film never received distribution during its initial run. The 1996 film received distribution for the first time after Maya Cade watched it in an archive and brought it to a distributor, Milestone Films, and will have its New York premiere in June 2024.Guest: Maya Cade
Maya Cade is the creator and curator of Black Film Archive, a digital archive cataloguing Black film history from 1898 to 1999. The award-winning writer and curator is also a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress.
Maya Cade is the creator and curator of Black Film Archive and a scholar-in-residence at the Library of Congress. She has been awarded special distinctions by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics for the Archive. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Paris Review, Vulture, among other publications.
This is part of
Details
Production year
2024
Length
143 min.
Event language
English
Country
NL
Part of
This is Film! 2024
This is Film! Film Heritage in Practice is an annual public lecture series devoted to notable projects in the fields of film restoration and film heritage, with international guest speakers and film screenings.
You have to accept cookies to be able to watch this.
Share your love for film and become a member of the Eye Society.