Juke: Passages from the Films of Spencer Willams

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Juke: Passages from the Films of Spencer Williams is a 2015 documentary film [1] [2] by film essayist Thom Andersen featuring selected excerpts from the films of African American director Spencer Williams Jr. [3]

Contents

Summary

The film is a plotless thirty-minute montage reconsidering Spencer's religious melodramas [4] such as The Blood of Jesus (1941) that cuts scenes and aspects of his films [5] while assembling major and minor moments into a portrait reflecting 1940s Black America. [6]

Production

Commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art as part of their program “A Road Three Hundred Years Long: Cinema and the Great Migration”, [7] [8] [9] Thom regraded his movie as [10]

"a kin to Walker Evans' photographs of sharecroppers' homes in the 1930s and George Orwell's essays on English working class interiors".

See also

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References

  1. Harris, Brandon (2015-06-08). "Black America's Forgotten Film History". The New Republic. ISSN   0028-6583 . Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  2. "THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE | Dedicated to screening rare & important films in their original format". www.melbournecinematheque.org. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  3. "Juke--Passages from the Films of Spencer Williams | IFFR". iffr.com. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  4. "MoMA | One Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series". www.moma.org. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  5. "Rotterdam 2016. In Praise of Wang Bing and Spencer Williams". MUBI. 2016-02-05. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  6. "Juke / The Blood of Jesus". Harvard Film Archive. 2015-10-23. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  7. Hoberman, J. "J. Hoberman on Thom Andersen's Juke". www.artforum.com. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  8. Hoberman, J. (2015-05-29). "'A Road Three Hundred Years Long': A Cinema Stirring Amid an Exodus". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  9. "Interview: Thom Andersen". Film Comment. 2015-06-04. Retrieved 2023-09-21.
  10. "Juke: Passages From Films By Spencer Williams". LUX. Retrieved 2023-09-21.