Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and author. His work has continually explored race relations, issues within the black community, the role of media in contemporary life, urban crime and poverty, and other political issues. Lee has won numerous accolades for his work, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Peabody Awards. He has also been honored with an Honorary BAFTA Award in 2002, an Honorary César in 2003, and the Academy Honorary Award in 2015.
Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (; was an American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films. Although the short-lived Lincoln Motion Picture Company was the first movie company owned and controlled by black filmmakers, Micheaux is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, a prominent producer of race films, and has been described as "the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century". He produced both silent films and sound films.
The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios along with some independent films, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1910 to 1962 and is still typical of most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. With more than 600 English-language films released on average every year as of 2017, it produced the fourth-largest number of films of any national cinema, after India, Japan, and China. While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. Because of this, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema, and has produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood often outsources production to the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The major film studios of Hollywood are the primary source of the most commercially successful and most ticket-selling movies in the world.
Tokenism is the practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to be inclusive to members of minority groups, especially by recruiting people from underrepresented groups in order to give the appearance of racial or gender equality within a workplace or educational context. The effort of including a token individual in work or school is usually intended to create the impression of social inclusiveness and diversity.
Hallelujah is a 1929 American pre-Code Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical directed by King Vidor, and starring Daniel L. Haynes and Nina Mae McKinney.
The African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) is the world's largest group of Black film critics that gives various annual awards for excellence in film and television. It was founded in 2003 in New York City. In 2023 Variety stated that since it started, "the organization’s purpose was clear: to amplify Black voices in film criticism and arts entertainment journalism from across the African Diaspora."
Midnight Ramble is a 1994 documentary about the early history of Black American movies from the period between 1910 and 1950. Known as "race movies", these films, traditionally independent of Hollywood, were made primarily by, for and about the black community. This documentary is a tribute to a film genre that lasted for more than 40 years, produced over 500 movies, and created a foundation for contemporary films from directors such as Spike Lee and Tyler Perry. James Avery narrates this exploration of the early black film industry. There is a mistaken assumption that "race films" began largely in reaction to D. W. Griffith's 1915 The Birth of a Nation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Race movies actually began around 1910 in Chicago in response to the Black Community longing to see themselves reflected on the silver screen via this new medium of film. Wanting to see themselves through their own eyes, on their own terms thus counteracting the Hollywood stereotypes within the American media.
The portrayal of Native Americans in television and films concerns indigenous roles in cinema, particularly their depiction in Hollywood productions. Especially in the Western genre, Native American stock characters can reflect contemporary and historical perceptions of Native Americans and the Wild West.
Imaging Blackness is the complex concept of expressing, recognizing, or assigning specific sets of ideas or values used in the depiction of Black people. This depiction can be shown through various forms of media: film, television, literature. More specifically in film, the portrayal of Black people as been imaged and captured throughout history.
The representation of African Americans in speech, writing, still or moving pictures has been a major concern in mainstream American culture and a component of media bias in the United States.
The presence of African Americans in major motion picture roles has stirred controversy and been limited dating back decades due to lingering racism following slavery and segregation. "Through most of the 20th century, images of African-Americans in advertising were mainly limited to servants like the pancake-mammy Aunt Jemima and Rastus, the chef on the Cream of Wheat box." While African American representation in the film industry has improved over the years, it has not been a linear process; "Race in American cinema has rarely been a matter of simple step-by-step progress. It has more often proceeded in fits and starts, with backlashes coming on the heels of breakthroughs, and periods of intense argument followed by uncomfortable silence."
Illusions is a 1982 film written and directed by Julie Dash. The short film depicts the life of an African American woman passing as a white woman working in the film industry during the 1940s. It calls attention to the lack of African Americans in the film industry during that era.
Inequality in Hollywood refers to the various forms of discrimination and social inequality in the American media industry. There are many branches of the media industry, such as news, television, film, music, agencies, studios, to name some of the major players. In each one of these branches, there are many instances of inequality since Hollywood formed as the entertainment hub of America in the early 1900s.
Women are involved in the film industry in all roles, including as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions, though women have been underrepresented in creative positions.
Barry Jenkins is an American filmmaker. After making his filmmaking debut with the short film My Josephine (2003), he directed his first feature film Medicine for Melancholy (2008) for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. He is also a member of The Chopstars collective as a creative collaborator.
A great number of movies have been made about race relations, or with a strong racial theme over the last century, from D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) to Marvel Studios' Black Panther (2018).
Filmic representations of women have developed in tandem with changing historical and socio-cultural influences. Italian neorealism was a movement that, through art and film, attempted to "[recover] the reality of Italy" for an Italian society that was disillusioned by the propaganda of fascism. Representations of women in this era were influenced heavily by the suffrage movement and changing socio-political awareness of gender rights. The tension of this transitional era created a spectrum of female representation in film, where female characters were written to acquiesce, or more commonly reject, the societal standards imposed on the women of the age. Italian neorealists, with their characteristic use of realism and thematic-driven narrative, used their medium to explore these established ideals of gender and produce a number of filmic representations of women.
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.
