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Imaging Blackness exhibit at DCC focuses on history of African-American filmmaking
April 15, 2009
--HELENA-WEST HELENA – “Imaging Blackness,” an exhibit tracing the growth of African-American participation in the movies, is currently on display at the Delta Cultural Center.
More than 40 vintage black movie posters from 1915 through 2002 are utilized in the exhibit of artifacts from the archives of the Indiana University Black Film Center at Bloomington. “Imaging Blackness” will continue at the DCC through Friday, August 7.
The 1915 date is important in framing the exhibit, not because it represents the earliest film portrayals by black actors, but because of the film productions that sprang up in reaction to director D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation.” This 1915 landmark film was lauded as a masterwork by many and lambasted by others for a storyline that lionized the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed blacks in a variety of base stereotypes.
The exhibit includes posters for “Sleepy Sam, the Sleuth” (1915), “The Green-Eyed Monster” (1920), and “The Flying Ace” (1926) as silent era examples of films with positive depictions of blacks made primarily for African-American audiences. Later posters advertising “The Bronze Venus” (1938), starring Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in “Island in the Sun” (1957), and Sidney Poitier’s Oscar-winning performance in “Lilies of the Field” (1963) explore the evolution of black film roles in Hollywood’s movie industry.
The wider depiction of black actors in the 1970s is explored with director Gordon Parks’ acclaimed “The Learning Tree” (1969) and several posters for “blaxploitation” movies including “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (1970), “Superfly” (1972), and action star Pam Grier’s “Coffy” (1973).
More recent posters include the dramas “A Soldier’s Story” (1984), “The Color Purple” (1985), and “Beloved” (1998), as well as the documentaries “Say Amen, Somebody” (1982) and “Jim Brown: All-American” (2002).
As a part of the exhibit, two documentaries on the history of black filmmaking will be screened at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street daily throughout the display of “Imaging Blackness.” The public is invited to attend the exhibit and documentary screenings of “A Century of Black Cinema” and “Small Steps – Big Strides: The Black Experience in Hollywood”; film presentations begin at 9 a.m. daily. Admission is free.
Gallery hours at the DCC Visitors Center at 141 Cherry Street and the nearby DCC Depot at 95 Missouri Street are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. “King Biscuit Time,” the nation’s longest-running blues radio program, is hosted each weekday at the DCC Visitor’s Center by “Sunshine” Sonny Payne, from 12:15 to 12:45 p.m. “Delta Sounds,” hosted by DCC Assistant Director Terry Buckalew and Payne, is broadcast each Friday at 1 to 1:30 p.m.
For more information, interested persons can contact the Delta Cultural Center at (870) 338-4350 or toll free at (800) 358-0972, visit the DCC online at www.deltaculturalcenter.com, or email info@deltaculturalcenter.com.
“Imaging Blackness” is a program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance, with the Arkansas Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Delta Cultural Center shares the vision of all seven agencies of the Department of Arkansas Heritage – to preserve and promote Arkansas heritage as a source of pride and satisfaction. Other agencies within the department are the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, the Old State House Museum, the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Natural Heritage Commission.
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