Event

Reviving and Reviewing the “Race Film”

Co-presented by Wolf Humanities Center and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with Lightbox Film Center at International House Philadelphia.

This series revisits so-called “race films”: works of independent African American cinema produced from the 1910s to the 1940s. The afterlives of these  flms are manifest in their recurring religious themes, the vexed politics of their preservation and restoration, and their creative in influence on later  filmmakers.

The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996, 90 min)
This “fake documentary” stars the director as a fictionalized version of herself. Dunye plays a Black lesbian filmmaker who, captivated by an elusive, queer 1930s black film actress, decides to make a film about her.

__________________________________________

Wed Feb 21 2018 @ 7:00pm, International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut Street.
Free and open to the public. Pre-registration requested: wolfhumanities.upenn.edu