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"Everett's fine book makes an important contribution to our understanding of black cinema, from production to journalism and criticism, as a resistance practice representing every orientation of black culture, from the popular to the political and aesthetic. This one is 'must' reading for all interested in black cinema, its issues, and its critical discourse."--Ed Guerrero, New York University
List of contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Returning the Gaze 1
1.
The Souls of Black Folk in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Black Newspaper Criticism and the Early Cinema, 1909–1916
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2.
The Birth of a Nation and Interventionist Criticism: Resisting Race as Spectacle 59
3. Cinephilia in the Black Renaissance: New Negro Film Criticism, 1916–1930 107
4. Black Modernist Dialectics and the New Deal: Accomodationist and Radical Film Criticism, 1930–1940 179
5. The Recalcitrant Gaze; Critiquing Hollywood in the 1940s 272
Epilogue 314
Notes 317
Works Cited 333
Index 349
About the author
Anna Everett
Summary
Revises American film history by recuperating the extensive and all-but-forgotten participation of black film critics during the early twentieth century. This work excavates a wealth of early critical writing on the cinema by black cultural critics, academics, journalists, poets, writers, and film fans.
