
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.
About the programmer:
Graham Cumberbatch is a writer, designer, film programmer, and video artist born and based in Austin, Texas. He owes his deep love for Black cinema to an historian grandfather who always talked over the movie, an action-film-obsessed dad with excellent taste in Westerns, and an actress mother with a soft spot for old Hollywood. He'll also watch anything starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.
IG: @ashtongraham
The Feminine Mashriq
Exploring essential cinema by women and femme directors from the Arab world.
Week One: Wajiib & Palestine
Annemarie Jacir is an incredible filmmaker from Palestine. In 2003 she had the first Arab short film to be shown at Cannes (overcoming like 20 impossibles), became the first woman from Palestine to direct a feature in 2008 (Salt of the Sea), and was Palestine’s official nomination for the Academy Awards Best International film in 2012 (When I Saw You). In 2017, to rave reviews from audiences and critics alike, Jacir released Wajib.
Week Two: Caramel & Lebanon
This week’s film choice takes place in the incredible city of Beirut. Caramel is the directorial debut of Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki. For her first film, it was important to her to show Lebanon how it actually is, complex and full of life, and not just destitute and war-torn the way that it is portrayed in Western media.
Week Three: The Silences of the Palace & Tunisia
For the third installment of The Feminine Mashriq, we won’t be in the Mashriq at all. Instead, we head to the Maghreeb region to look at the film, The Silences of the Palace. Written and directed by Moufida Tlatli, Silences of the Palace debuted in 1994 and received numerous accolades including Cannes’ Golden Camera and Toronto International Film Festival’s Critics’ Award.
Week Four: Wadjda & Saudi Arabia
The final film in The Feminine Mashriq may be its most monumental. Wadjda is not only Haifaa al-Monsour’s first feature length film, it’s the first feature length film to have been entirely made in Saudi Arabia. For 35 years, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia banned movie theaters (publicly reopening them in 2018 with national screenings of Black Panther) meaning when Wadjda was released in 2012, the citizens had to wait until the film’s at-home distribution to even see it.
About the programmer:
Emily Basma is a southern filmmaker and photographer. Growing up in a space between Arab and white, she found herself clinging to films from the Arab world to get a better idea about culture from the region her Lebanese family lovingly referred to as “The Old Country.”
Cinema LatinXperience: Mexico
Cinema LatinXperience is a virtual film series highlighting the explosion of filmmaking and productions coming from Latin America in the 21st century.
Week One: YA NO ESTOY AQUI (2019)
Week Two: ROMA (2018)
Week Three: STELLET LICHT (2007)
About the host:
Nico Treviño is an artist native to Dallas, Texas. He spent his childhood summers at his grandmother’s house near the Texas-Mexico border where he gained an intimate education on family roots and cultural traditions.
Now based in Austin, Texas, Nico is honored to share his perspective on Mexico, cinema and modernity.
Cinema Sounds
A collection of playlists inspired by the movies we love created by Austin somebodys