Black Lenses, Black Voices: African American Film Now (Genre and Beyond: A Film Studies Series) - Softcover

This book will make a solid addition to the growing library of recent black film studies. . . . Highly recommended for all film collections. * Library Journal * Reid makes another substantial contribution to literature on African American film history and theory with this book. . . . The volume's six freestanding essays examine early African American film, black family film, black action film, black horror film, black female-centered film, and black independent film. Essential. * CHOICE * In Black Lenses, Black Voices Mark Reid has given us an always interesting summation of his evolving, highly original analysis of black film as a cinema 'committed to the survival and wholeness of an entire people.' -- Thomas R. Cripps, Morgan State University Mark Reid brings to our attention a complex and rich group of contemporary films, deftly setting them within their history in African American and Hollywood filmmaking. Always enlightening, never simple, Reid's work is significant for film criticism and for race and gender media analysis. -- Janet Staiger, University of Texas at Austin

Black Lenses, Black Voices is a provocative look at films directed and written_and sometimes produced_by African Americans, as well as black-oriented films whose directors or screenwriters are not black. Mark Reid shows how certain films dramatize the contemporary African American community as a politically and economically diverse group, vastly different from film representations of the 1960s. Taking us through the development of African American independent filmmaking before and after World War II, he then illustrates the unique nature of African American family, action, horror, female-centered, and independent films, such as Eve's Bayou, Jungle Fever, Shaft, Souls of Sin, Bones, Waiting to Exhale, Monster's Ball, Sankofa, and many more.