Events

Scraps in Black and White

Image courtesy Library of Congress

When:
Thursday, May 7, 2015, 7:00pm - 7:00pm
Description:

Featuring some of the earliest representations of Black subjects on film, these rarely screened "paper prints" from 1894-1915 encompass a range of genres and topics, from Caribbean travelogues to blackface slapstick to boxing films to cakewalk performances. Selected from roughly 3,000 early film titles registered as photographs on contact paper in the era before films were catalogued at the Library of Congress, these "paper prints" are among the few surviving glimpses of early African American cinema.

These rarely screened shorts will be accompanied by pianist David Drazin and commentary by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, author, Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity and professor, Department of Cinema and Media Studies.