A Place of Rage is a 1991 film by Pratibha Parmar. The film includes interviews of Angela Davis, June Jordan, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Alice Walker. [1] It discusses and asks for political action regarding racism and homophobia, linking the two issues together. [2] It was created to be aired on British television and it is 52 minutes long. [3]
The main interviews of Davis, Jordan, and Walker were filmed in the present day. Davis and Jordan discuss the effects of Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and other activists; as well as women's roles in black churches during the Civil Rights Movement and the outcome of the 1960s Black Power movement. [3] Parmar took a 1970 prison interview of Davis and intercuts scenes of poetry of June Jordan. [1] The documentary also uses music from the Staple Singers, Neville Brothers, and Janet Jackson as well as documentary scenes of the 1960s. [3]
The film title originates from how the interview subjects say there was a "place of rage" within black people in the 1960s where they collected anger from being oppressed and released it against the persons oppressing them. The interview subjects stated that by the 1990s this shifted to a sense of defeatism and internal repression characterized by drug use and resignation. [3]
It had been screened at various gay and lesbian international film festivals. [1]
It won the 1992 National Black Programming Consortium "Best Historical Documentary" award. [1]
Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle rated the film and Khush , another one of Parmar's films, as three out of five stars. Baumgarten stated that "whatever its forum, A Place of Rage's testimony, wisdom, compassion and renewal are nuggets that stay with you long after the images fade" and that "it is not quite fair to judge [A Place of Rage] as a feature film due to its length and purpose of airing on UK television. [3]
American Dream is a 1990 British-American cinéma vérité documentary film directed by Barbara Kopple and co-directed by Cathy Caplan, Thomas Haneke, and Lawrence Silk.
Wheeler Winston Dixon is an American filmmaker and scholar. He is an expert on film history, theory and criticism. His scholarship has particular emphasis on François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, American experimental cinema and horror films. He has written extensively on numerous aspects of film, including his books A Short History of Film and A History of Horror. From 1999 through the end of 2014, he was co-editor, along with Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He is regarded as a top reviewer of films. In addition, he is notable as an experimental American filmmaker with films made over several decades, and the Museum of Modern Art exhibited his works in 2003. He taught at Rutgers University, The New School in New York, the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and as of May 2020, is the James E. Ryan professor emeritus of film studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is an experimental filmmaker, artist and author. She is Willa Cather Professor Emerita in Film Studies. Her work has focused on gender, race, ecofeminism, queer sexuality, eco-theory, and class studies. From 1999 through the end of 2014, she was co-editor along with Wheeler Winston Dixon of the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. In 2016, she was named Willa Cather Endowed Professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and took early retirement in 2020.
Pratibha Parmar is a British writer and filmmaker. She has made feminist documentaries such as Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth and My Name is Andrea about Andrea Dworkin.
Kaddu Beykat is a 1975 Senegalese film directed by Safi Faye. It was the first feature film made by a Black African woman to be commercially distributed and brought international recognition for its director. Centred on a romance, it chronicles the daily lives of people in a rural Senegalese village.
Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women is a 1993 book by Alice Walker with Pratibha Parmar, who made an award-winning documentary of the same name. Following on from her 1992 novel Possessing the Secret of Joy, Walker undertakes a journey to parts of Africa where clitoridectomy is still practised. Warrior Marks is a harrowing work as Walker interviews women who have had the operation done and finally interviews a woman—circumcised herself—who performs the operation.
Gilda de Abreu was a Brazilian actress, singer, writer and film director.
Tender Fictions is a 1996 autobiographical documentary film directed by American experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. It is the second of a trilogy of documentary films that includes Nitrate Kisses and History Lessons. Together, the three films are sometimes known as the "History trilogy". Tender Fictions details Hammer's life and her attempts to "construct" a self. The film was nominated for a prize at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival.
Marie Epstein was an actress, scenarist, film director, and film preservationist. Her career is distinguished by three important collaborations. Throughout the 1920s, she acted in and wrote scenarios for films directed by her brother, Jean Epstein. From the 1920s through the early 1950s, she collaborated with the director Jean Benoît-Lévy on sixteen films, serving variously as a writer, assistant director, and co-director. From the early 1950s to her retirement in 1977, Epstein served as a film preservationist at the Cinémathèque française.
Zeinabu irene Davis is an American filmmaker and professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. In 1985, she received her M.A in African studies at UCLA and went on to earn her M.F.A in Film and Television production in 1989. Davis is known as one of the graduates and filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion. The L.A. Rebellion refers to the first African-American students who studied film at UCLA. Through their collective efforts, they sought to put an end to the prejudices of Hollywood by creating experimental and unconventional films. The main goal of these films was to create original Black stories and bring them to the main screens. Her works in film include short narratives, documentaries and experimental films that focus heavily on the African American female perspective.
Ngozi Onwurah is a British-Nigerian film director, producer, model, and lecturer. She is best known as a filmmaker for her autobiographical film The Body Beautiful (1991) and her first feature film, Welcome II the Terrordome (1994). Her work is reflective of the unfiltered experiences of Black Diaspora in which she was raised.
Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth is a documentary film directed by Pratibha Parmar, made by Kali Films production company. The film follows the life of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, poet and activist Alice Walker. Shooting began in May 2011. The documentary was first aired on BBC Four television on Sunday July 7, 2013, and on PBS on February 7, 2014.
Siv Marianne Ahrne is a Swedish film director and screenwriter. She has directed ten films between 1970 and 1997. Her 1976 film Near and Far Away won the award for Best Director at the 13th Guldbagge Awards. Her 1978 film The Walls of Freedom was entered into the 11th Moscow International Film Festival. According to film historian Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Ahrne was one of the first women to make documentary films in Sweden, and Foster noted that Ahrne's films have received little attention in the United States.
Sheila McLaughlin is an American director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and photographer. She wrote and directed the controversial film, She Must Be Seeing Things (1987). Her debut feature film, Committed (1984), which she co-directed with writer Lynne Tillman, is an experimental narrative of the life of Frances Farmer, shot on a low budget of $45,000. McLaughlin's films have been described as presenting "a grasp of a developing new feminist language of cinema."
Khush is a 1991 British short film directed by Pratibha Parmar. It portrays lesbians and gay men from India and other parts of Asia, discussing their coming out and their acceptance and embracing of their sexuality. Khush also discusses homosexuality in the Indian diaspora.
Barbara McCullough is a director, production manager and visual effects artist whose directorial works are associated with the Los Angeles School of Black independent filmmaking. She is best known for Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979), Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space (1980), Fragments (1980), and World Saxophone Quartet (1980).
Black Box is a 1978 American short film directed by Scott B and Beth B and starring Lydia Lunch and Bob Mason.
Four Women is a 1975 short experimental film produced and directed by Julie Dash featuring music by Nina Simone.
Skyscraper is a 1959 documentary film by Shirley Clarke about the construction of the 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper.
Lisa Rinzler is an American cinematographer who works on both feature films and documentaries. She has worked with Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, the Hughes Brothers and Tamra Davis.