book review

This book review appeared in Sojourner: The Women's Forum (newspaper),
spring 1999

Before and Behind the Lens
Black Women Film and Video Artists

Edited by Jacqueline Bobo
Routledge, 1998

reviewed by Danielle Georges

In her introduction to Black Women Film & Video Artists, editor Jacqueline Bobo raises the concern that the "widespread recognition of Black women film and video artists lags behind their extensive history." Although Black women have been making films since the turn of the 20^th century, there is little accessible documentation and critical exploration of this work.

Into the gap between recognition and history steps this book. Part of Routledge's American Film Readers Series, the book consists of ten essays by noted scholars, critics, and film-and video-makers who offer critiques and background information on the shorts, documentaries, and feature-length films produced by Black women. The essays brought together in this book help situate films and videos by Black women within an historical continuum of film and video production ranging from Madame C.J. Walker's short promotional films in the 1920s; to Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic films in the 1930s; to the 1970 film I am Somebody, directed by Madeline Anderson; to Julie Dash's 1991 independent film Daughters of the Dust; and Oprah Winfrey's recent Hollywood production of Beloved.

Black Women Film & Video Artists is divided into three sections, "Critical Perspectives," "Critical Practice," and "In their own Words." The authors comment on themes that emerge in Black women's films and videos, as well as on distinctive cinematic language used to produce those works. Taken together the essays contribute to the building of a multi-faceted analytic framework for understanding Black women's film and video.

Gloria J. Gibson-Hudson, in her essay "The Ties that Bind: Cinematic Representations by Black Women Video and Film Artists," explores the idea of matrilinearity and what she calls "the use of cultural memory" to provide "texture, complexity, and authenticity to the character[s] and the narrative" of a film.

Ntongela Masilela, in his essay "Women Directors of the Los Angeles School" chronicles the development of what he calls a Morrissonean Africanism in such films as Julie Dash's Diary of an African Nun and Alike Sharon Larkin's A Different Image. Masilela contrasts Toni Morrison's "historically constructed Africanism" with Afrocentrism's "polemical treatises of African unity" and suggests that the works of women filmmakers like Dash and Larkin represent a revised pan-Africanism.

Masilela explains that Dash's 1977 Diary of an African Nun, based on a short story by Alice Walker, is the chronicle of a young African woman's transformation from "primitive" to "civilized." The African nun "develops her personal and political consciousness and tries to make sense of two colliding and irreconcilable perspectives of the world: the African and the European." Dash, however, he says, "draws the tale deeper into the psyche of the title character," altering the story's narrative to make it even more disjunctive than Walker's original story. Masilela identifies "Morrisonean Africanism" in Dash's filmic portrayal of "the process through which the nun gains self-knowledge as to her location in this momentous struggle - a struggle she perceives as being determined by deliberate choices and interventions."

A strong focus of many of the essays is the shaping of images that reflect real Black women. In "The Ties that Bind," Gibson-Hudson writes,"

"[b]ecause many mainstream cinematic images of Black women are informed by erroneous and stereotyped societal attitudes, to challenge such caricatures has become the struggle of many Black women filmmakers worldwide."

Some of this work has been innovative and experimental. Several essays, including Monique Guillory's "The Functional Family of Camille Billops;" Carmen Coustaut's "Love on My Mind: Creating Black Women's Love Stories;" and Gloria J. Gibson-Hudson's "Michelle Parkerson: A Visionary Risk Taker" discuss films and videos (and their makers) which offer new visions of the world.

Michelle Parkerson's 1993 video Odds and Ends is one such example. Set in the year 2086, it is, in Gibson-Hudson's words, "A Black Amazon science fiction." Produced by Parkerson while at the American Film Institute Directing Workshop, Odds and Ends complicates the issues of gender and race in her creation of a 21^st-century world in which she says, [t]he clones are white - white men... although there is the suggestion that the enemy is not all male and not all white." As she creates and offers up an on-screen future, her production context speaks to and challenges prevailing, perhaps old, notions concerning who makes films. Parkerson's cast for the project is all Black, and she says in the Gibson-Hudson interview,

The producer, director, associate DP/videographer, first AD, and second AD, were all Black women. The videographer was Michelle Crenshaw. The sound recordist Veda Campbell is also a Black woman, as was the editor, and so on.

In addition to identifying themes and readings of the works explored, the book, by virtue of its essay format, disallows a singular or totalizing view of either the films or the women who make them. Likewise, the films and videos discussed take on a variety of issues, including Black women's identity, cultural politics, domestic relations, and Black women's sexuality, and creativity.

The book's last section "In their own Words" features interviews with experienced Black women creative artists. In an anecdotal essay, C.A. Griffith gives a sense of how it feels to work in the film industry.

Black Women Film & Video Artists is an impressive collection of essays, but minor flaws must be noted. The first is the assumption of familiarity, on the part of the reader, with the language of criticism that appears in some of the essays. Gibson-Hudson's essay is excellent in the information it relays but contains such linguistically-challenging sentences as "This paper posits the idea that cinematic representations of Black women by Black women filmmakers are constructed by utilizing aspects of Black women's cultural identity situated within a specific socio-historic context." The book seems to have been compiled primarily for academics. While highly dense language can be excused in that context, for those of us outside the academy, such language can be daunting or obstructive.

Oddly enough, an essay containing technical or industrial language, C.A. Griffith's "Below the Line: (Re)calibrating the Filmic Gaze" was one I found compelling. Here's an example of its language:

"... And the camera we're using is an Arri III. It's lightweight, so it's perfect for steadicam. The only problem is that on an Arri III, if the loop is two or three perfs too long, the emulsion will hit the screw inside the camera body and scratch the emulsion right down the center..."

The meaning resonates because we know that under no circumstance does the camera operator (who could be you) want the emulsion to hit the screw. While technical, the essay's anecdotal quality is gripping. The second flaw, more serious than the first, is the book's assumption that Black women film and video artists are U.S. black women film and video artists. Gibson-Hudson's essay "The Ties that Bind" is the exception to this focus. She looks at Black women filmmakers from the United States, Ethiopia, Britain, and Canada. The exclusion of Black women outside the United States may have to do with greater limits on resources for non-U.S. women - hence more Black women in the United States can make films. The oversight, however, is all the more glaring because of the strong presence of English Black women in contemporary filmmaking.

The last flaw is the inclusion of P. Jane Splawn's interview of Ntozake Shange. Although it is an interesting interview with the author (prefaced by Splawn's statement that "the distinction between theater and film is not so definitive,") the interview has little to do with Shange's thoughts on film (or theatre), and would have been better placed in a book on poetics or literature.

On the whole, Black Women Film & Video Artists is an excellent introduction to Black women film- and video-makers in the United States, a good reference book, and living history text.