Professor Mark Anthony Neal

African & African American Studies—AAAS 390s-01

Program in Art of the Moving Image—AMI 390s-01

Visual and Media Studies—VMS 290s-01

M.T.Th—12:30 pm – 2:35 pm

Perkins LINK 2 – 060

The release of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986) began a relative renaissance of mainstream Black filmmaking—a dynamic that was furthered with the emergence of accessible digital technology in the 1990s.  As Lee has maintained his status as a pseudo-Hollywood outsider (with measured critical acclaim), Tyler Perry has leveraged the spending habits of his base-audience to become the most commercially successful Black filmmaker of his generation. Within these two narratives are the struggles faced by Black independent filmmakers.

The course will examine contemporary Black film, with an emphasis on the role of Black film in the hyper-visuality of Blackness in the digital era, as well as the debates over what constitutes “Black” film, the distribution and promotional challenges faced by independent Black filmmakers, and the role of non-Black filmmakers in presenting the Black experience in film.

Directors examined may include: Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, Kasi Lemmons, John Singleton, Ava Duvernay, Dee Rees, Tonya Hamilton, Haile Gerima, Charles Burnett, Leslie Harris, Mira Nair, and Tim Disney.