Black Is Not a Genre

Black Is Not A Genre is a film series hosted by Graham Cumberbatch highlighting the under-examined and under-appreciated contributions of black cinema to genre film.

Camp ft. B*A*P*S*

For week one of Black Is Not A Genre, we explore “camp.” We’ll be viewing Robert Townsend’s B*A*P*S* (1997) together and reimagining the genre of camp to include Black culture’s essential contribution.

Thrillers ft. DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS

For Week 4 of Black Is Not A Genre, we’ll be celebrating a double feature of two Franklin classics: Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), the noir period piece, based on the serial detective novels of Walter Mosley, and Franklin’s striking, critically acclaimed feature debut, One False Move (1992). The former, an inexplicable box-office flop despite its tailor-made franchise potential, the latter, a sleeper-hit crime drama originally destined for straight-to-video release; both films are indicative of the peculiar, often confounding plight of Black filmmakers working in distinct genres. ⁣

Musicals ft. SCHOOL DAZE

Spike Lee’s second feature film School Daze (1988) is transgressive on two front. For one, it wrested creative control back from genre tradition that had largely erased the influence of Blackness from its history and re-infused it with the most cutting-edge Black music of its time. Two, it reversed the white-dominant insularity of musical theatre culture and reflected that alienation back onto audiences by setting School Daze within the culturally esoteric world of historically Black colleges.
And, while for much of his career, it was seen as a relative misstep between his precocious debut (She’s Gotta Have It) and his iconic third feature (Do The Right Thing), over time, the cultural perception of School Daze has grown to include an appreciation not only of the huge risk Spike took in releasing a full-blown musical as his sophomore effort but in its honest and unabashed willingness to, as the ol’ folks say “air out dirty laundry,” outside the safety of Black communal spaces.

Sci-Fi ft. BORN IN FLAMES

For week two of Black is Not a Genre, Graham digs in to Sci-Fi and the 1983 film Born in Flames plus Space Traders, an excerpted vignette from the all-but-forgotten 1994 sci-fi anthology series Cosmic Slop.

Coming-of-Age ft. THE WOOD

We’re kicking off August with the coming-of-age classic The Wood (1999). Directed by Rick Famuyiwa (Brown Sugar, Dope, The Mandalorian) and starring a who’s-who of young Black It girls and boys of the late ’90s and early aughts, The Wood was the seventh film produced by MTV Films and part of a barnstorming spate of four movies released by the newly formed studio that year alone. Watch along with us as Week 5 of Black Is Not A Genre explores the under-examined universality of the Black Bildungsroman, the invisibility of the Black middle class, and the magic of Black Los Angeles.

Horror ft. GANJA AND HESS

Week 8 of Black Is Not a Genre is another doubleheader featuring films from two definitive eras of Black American cinema. Written and directed by leading light of the ’70s ‘rebellion’ era, Bill Gunn, Ganja and Hess uses vampire mythology to paint hauntingly abstract metaphors for Black assimilation, loss of identity (the real life simile for which is the irony that the film was thought to be lost forever at the time of Gunn’s death), and the social psychology of white religious imperialism. Director Ernest Dickerson’s 1990 film Def By Temptation laid the tracks for a brief but prolific burst of Black-centric horror films in the ’90s, but the scrappy indie film is overshadowed by more Hollywood fare like Vampire In Brooklyn. These unheralded gems represent a major void in horror that underscores the genre’s social significance. If horror is film’s window into society’s subconscious, its narration of who is worthy of fear and death and who is worthy of life and salvation, then the lack of films from America’s socially and racially ostracized has a host of real-life implications. 

Rom-Coms ft. THE WEEKEND

In week three, we’re watching Stella Meghie’s The Weekend, discussing the mythology of the rom-com, and exploring the role of Black film in redefining what’s funny and reconstructing what it means to deserve love.⁣

Magical Realism ft. LOSING GROUND

This week we’re talking magical realism with another landmark double dip, featuring Kathleen Collins’ ethereal Black intellectual relationship drama Losing Ground (1982) and Kasi Lemmons’ dark, ancestral mystery, Eve’s Bayou (1997). Collins was one of the first Black women to make a feature-length narrative intended for public release. Losing Ground, however, never secured distribution in her lifetime, not receiving a theatrical release until 2015. It’s a testament both to what American film refuses to imagine about Black film and what it stands to gain by acknowledging its genius.