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African-American Cinema
African American cinema is loosely classified as films made by, for, or about Black Americans. Historically, African American films have been made with African-American casts and marketed to African-American audiences. The production team and director were sometimes also African American. More recently, Black films featuring multicultural casts aimed at multicultural audiences have also included American Blackness as an essential aspect of the storyline. Segregation, discrimination, issues of representation, derogatory stereotypes and tired Trope (cinema), tropes have dogged Black American cinema from the start of a century-plus history that roughly coincided with the century-plus history of American cinema. From the very earliest days of moving pictures, major studios used Black actors to appeal to Black audiences while also often relegating them to bit parts, casting women as maids or nannies, and men as natives or servants or either gender as a "Magical Negro, magical negro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Americans
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black people, Black racial groups of Africa. African Americans constitute the second largest ethno-racial group in the U.S. after White Americans. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, Africans enslaved in the United States. In 2023, an estimated 48.3 million people self-identified as Black, making up 14.4% of the country’s population. This marks a 33% increase since 2000, when there were 36.2 million Black people living in the U.S. African-American history began in the 16th century, with Africans being sold to Atlantic slave trade, European slave traders and Middle Passage, transported across the Atlantic to Slavery in the colonial history of the United States, the Western He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Singleton
John Daniel Singleton (January 6, 1968 April 28, 2019) was an American director, screenwriter, and producer. He made his feature film debut writing and directing '' Boyz n the Hood'' (1991), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming, at age 24, the first African American and youngest nominee in the category. Singleton went on to write and direct other films, such as the romantic drama ''Poetic Justice'' (1993), the socially conscious college-based drama '' Higher Learning'' (1995), the historical drama '' Rosewood'' (1997), the crime film '' Shaft'' (2000), the coming-of-age drama '' Baby Boy'' (2001) and the action films '' 2 Fast 2 Furious'' (2003), and '' Four Brothers'' (2005). In television, he the television crime drama ''Snowfall'' and directed episodes of shows such as ''Empire'', '' Rebel'' and the fifth episode of '' The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story''. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Lucas
Sam Lucas (August 7, 1840 – January 10, 1916) was an American actor, comedian, singer and songwriter. His birth year has also been reported as 1839, 1841, 1848 and 1850. Lucas' career began in blackface minstrelsy, but he later became one of the first African Americans to branch out into more serious drama, with roles in seminal works such as '' The Creole Show'' and '' A Trip to Coontown''. He was the first black man to portray the role of Uncle Tom on both stage and screen. James Weldon Johnson described him as the "Grand Old Man of the Negro Stage". He was vocal about liberating himself from the minstrel profession and was the only composer of spirituals in his time to present them consistently within the context of jubilee concerts. Early career Lucas was born Samuel Mildmay Lucas (or Samuel Lucas Milady) in Washington Court House, Ohio to free black parents. He showed a talent for guitar and singing as a teenager. While working as a barber, his local performances gai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackface
Blackface is the practice of performers using burned cork, shoe polish, or theatrical makeup to portray a caricature of black people on stage or in entertainment. Scholarship on the origins or definition of blackface vary with some taking a global perspective that includes European culture and Western colonialism. Blackface became a global phenomenon as an outgrowth of theatrical practices of racial misrepresentation, racial impersonation popular throughout Britain and its colonial empire, where it was integral to the development of imperial racial politics. Scholars with this wider view may date the practice of blackface to as early as Medieval Europe's mystery plays when bitumen and coal were used to darken the skin of white performers portraying demons, devils, and damned souls. Still others date the practice to English Renaissance theatre, English Renaissance theater, in works such as William Shakespeare's ''Othello''. However, some scholars see blackface as a specific pract ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sambo (racial Term)
Sambo is a derogatory label for a person of African descent in the Spanish language. Historically, it is a name in American English derived from a Spanish term for a person of African and Native American ancestry. After the Civil War, during and after the Jim Crow era the term was used in conversation, print advertising and household items as a pejorative descriptor for black people. The term is now considered offensive in American and British English. Etymology ''Sambo'' came into the English language from , the Spanish word in Latin America for a person of South American negro, mixed European, and native descent. This in turn may have come from one of three African language sources. '' Webster's Third International Dictionary'' holds that it may have come from the Kongo word ('monkey'). The Royal Spanish Academy gives the origin from a Latin word, possibly the adjective or another modern Spanish term (), both of which translate to 'bow-legged'. The equivalent term in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siegmund Lubin
Siegmund Lubin (born Zygmunt Lubszyński, April 20, 1851 – September 11, 1923) was an American film, motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia. Biography Siegmund Lubin was born as Zygmunt Lubszyński, a son of Samuel Lubszyński and Rebeka Lubszyńska, Polish Jews, in Breslau, Kingdom of Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland) or in Poznań, Kingdom of Prussia on April 20, 1851. His father, a successful Ophthalmology, ophthalmologist, moved the family for economic reasons to Berlin, Germany, Berlin soon after Zygmunt's birth. There young Zygmunt Germanicized the spelling of his first name to ''Siegmund''. He later graduated from the Heidelberg University and in 1876 emigrated to the United States, where he settled in Philadelphia and worked as an optometrist. Around 1881, he shortened his surname from the Polish Lubszyński to Lubin. He soon progressed to making his own camera and projector combination, which he sold. In 1896 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narrative Film
Narrative film, fictional film or fiction film is a motion picture that tells a fictional or fictionalized story, event or narrative. Commercial narrative films with running times of over an hour are often referred to as feature films, or feature-length films. The earliest narrative films, around the turn of the 20th century, were essentially filmed stage plays and for the first three or four decades these commercial productions drew heavily upon the centuries-old theatrical tradition. In this style of film, believable narratives and characters help convince the audience that the unfolding fiction is real. Lighting and camera movement, among other cinematic elements, have become increasingly important in these films. Great detail goes into the screenplays of narratives, as these films rarely deviate from the predetermined behaviours and lines of the classical style of screenplay writing to maintain a sense of realism. Actors must deliver dialogue and action in a believable way ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France in the middle of the 19th century. A ''vaudeville'' was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs and dances. Vaudeville became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, while changing over time. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and films. A vaudeville performer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minstrel Shows
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of African Americans. There were very few African-American performers and black-only minstrel groups that also formed and toured. Minstrel shows stereotyped blacks as dimwitted, lazy, buffoonish, cowardly, superstitious, and happy-go-lucky.The Coon Character , Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris State University. Retrieved 29 January 2016.John Kenrick , musicals101.com. 1996, revised 2003. Retrieved 9 November 2011. A recurring character was Jim Crow, an exaggerated portray ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Something Good – Negro Kiss
''Something Good – Negro Kiss'' is an American short silent film from 1898 of a couple kissing and holding hands. It is believed to depict the earliest on-screen kiss involving African Americans and is known for departing from the prevalent and purely stereotypical presentation of racist caricature in popular culture at the time it was made. The film was a lost film until its rediscovery in 2017, and was added to the American National Film Registry in 2018. Production In ''Something Good'', a well-dressed African American couple exchanges several kisses. Between kisses they hold and swing each other's hands and laugh together. The chemistry in the performances is described as "palpable," conveying an "unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure, and amusement." A slightly longer version came to light in 2021; this version shows the couple before they embrace, and includes the "prelude before the kisses, with wooing, refusal and negotiation.” The longer version was produced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Silent Film
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards. The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist, theater organist—or even, in larger cities, an orchestra—would play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music, or improvisation. Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Panther (film)
''Black Panther'' is a 2018 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Black Panther (character), of the same name. Produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, it is List of Marvel Cinematic Universe films, the 18th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). The film was directed by Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, and it stars Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa (Marvel Cinematic Universe), T'Challa / Black Panther alongside Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Andy Serkis. In ''Black Panther'', T'Challa is crowned king of Wakanda (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Wakanda following his father's death, but he is challenged by Killmonger (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Killmonger (Jordan), who plans to abandon the country's isolationist policies and begin a global revolution. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
