50 Movies That Address the History of Racism in America
By Elona Neal, Stacker News
On 1/31/21 at 9:00 AM EST
Movies give us perspective and allow us to watch certain events play out in front of our eyes. They can be educational and entertaining, making proper representation a significant factor in filmmaking. Black representation in Hollywood was almost nonexistent in the early 20th century, and when images of African Americans were shown, they were given negative stereotypes and criticized with racist imagery and oppression.
Years of systematic racism riddle the Black community today, but it was even more blatant back then. Young Black children around the country would turn on the television to a lack of positive images outside of racial stereotypes. As the years went on, Black representation slowly but surely began to make its way through the airwaves, and it started to educate people on the realities of Black lives as many Black filmmakers, actors, and writers created a n
The road to Radha Blank’s intimate and hilariously autobiographical debut film, “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” began with her losing her first screenwriting job.
Blank puts it even more bluntly. “One of my roles as an artist is to demystify things,” she says. “I got
fired off that job. And I just wanted to create something I couldn’t get fired from.”
A longtime struggling playwright, Blank developed her life story into a script about a 40-something Harlem-based theater artist who finds an unexpected outlet as an amateur rapper. “It was not my initial intention to make it as a film,” she says. Blank originally “took a note from my millennial brothers and sisters” and conceived it as a DIY web series.
The filmmaker as historian: Sam Pollard and MLK/FBI
Sam Pollard, a film editor, in New York, Jan. 15, 2021. Whether working on his own projects or others like Eyes on the Prize II and 4 Little Girls, the multihyphenate artist has built a monumental career examining America. Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times.
by Nicolas Rapold
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- Midway through the new documentary MLK/FBI, we get glimpses of a Martin Luther King Jr. not often seen in the usual montages of the civil rights movement. The 1963 March on Washington has taken place and he has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. This King is under myriad strains from the burdens of leadership, budding concerns about Vietnam, political and mortal threats, and round-the-clock surveillance by his own countrys chief law enforcement agency.
The Filmmaker as Historian: Sam Pollard and âMLK/FBIâ
Whether working on his own projects or others like âEyes on the Prize IIâ and â4 Little Girls,â the multihyphenate artist has built a monumental career examining America.
Sam Pollard in New York. He “is a master filmmaker,” Spike Lee said. “If you say he’s just an editor or just a director, that’s not the whole story.”Credit.Simbarashe Cha for The New York Times
By Nicolas Rapold
Jan. 15, 2021
Midway through the new documentary âMLK/FBI,â we get glimpses of a Martin Luther King Jr. not often seen in the usual montages of the civil rights movement. The 1963 March on Washington has taken place and he has accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. This King is under myriad strains from the burdens of leadership, budding concerns about Vietnam, political and mortal threats, and round-the-clock surveillance by his own countryâs chief law enforcement agency.
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The first time I entered Yonah Schimmel’s Knish Bakery on Houston Street, I was greeted, across from the signs selling cherry-flavored cream cheese knishes and egg creams, by the poster for Joan Micklin Silver’s
Hester Street (1975). I’d just moved from Los Angeles to New York City, unsure of where to go or what to do for paid work, and was spending a lot of hours milling about the Lower East Side, browsing bookshops. On the walls of Yonah Schimmel’s I would pore over the strips of yellowed newspaper clippings, which told stories of the local Yiddish theater players who’d come there in the ’20s to unwind over a knish after a night of performances, and who would stay talking into the next morning. When I finally sat down with a black-and-white egg cream, I made sure to face that