BLACK FILMMAKERS ON SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE: SETTING THE CINEMATIC RECORD STRAIGHT 

Dr. Hal Weaver, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University, and The BlackFilm Project, Boston. 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

During most of the 20th century, the tendency of Hollywood and other dominant media around the world was to demean Black men, women, and children through persistently negative stereotypes. Film historian Donald Bogle points out the following types: Black adult males--never men, only child-like and animal-like—were Uncle Toms (loyal, subservient), Coons (buffoons), or Bucks (big-muscled, over-sexed vultures, rapists). Black women were Mulattos (tragic) or Mammies (loyal, over-sized). Pioneering Black actors in the U.S. and U.K. film industries, like Paul Robeson and Canada Lee, tried to change that representation. However, the Plantation-Genre film, always under-valuing Black humanity, remained the norm. 

Only after the impact of the freedom movements in the 1950's and 1960’s in Africa, the U.S., and the Caribbean did Black filmmakers emerge to use their new, decision-making positions as directors and producers to reverse the cinematic images by beginning to set the record straight. Ousmane Sembene, Melvin Van Peebles, Sergio Giral, Euzhan Palcy, Spike Lee, Raoul Peck, and Gordon Parks were among the directors leading the precarious way in demonstrating that the liberation and other human aspirations of Black folks around the world could become legitimate cinematic concerns and subjects. 

An historic UNESCO-initiated, international, day-long round-table at ZIFF 2006 was aimed at breaking the cinematic silence about slavery and the slave trade. This lecture-film screening reveals the heroic efforts of several Black filmmakers in presenting Black folks with dignity and humanity during the horrific trans-Atlantic slave trade and the ensuing enslavement of Africans in the Americas. Films are selected from a variety of filmmakers from Africa and the African Diaspora: (1) the penetratingly analytical compilations of African-American Marlon Riggs (ETHNIC NOTIONS), (2) the creative, innovative Cuban Sergio Giral (THE OTHER FRANSICO/EL OTRO FRANCISCO), (3) the poetic documentary of Martiniquean Guy Deslauriers (THE MIDDLE PASSAGE/LE PASSAGE MILIEU), (4) the pioneering “Life” photographer, composer, film director-producer-scenarist African American Gordon Parks (SOLOMON NORTHUP’S ODYSSEY: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE), and (5) the Ethiopian-born/U.S.-migrated Haile Gerima (SANKOFA). All these filmmakers sought to subvert the Plantation-genre films denigrating persons from Africa and the African Diaspora. 

 

PROPOSITIONS 

 

There are several overall propositions to be made before moving on to discussing the films.  These propositions under-gird this presentation on the filmic treatment of slavery and the slave trade by Black directors. One. All film is political, either sustaining the status quo or advocating political, social, or economic change. In a more general sense, art and politics are inextricably interwoven. Two. A good "historical film" might be as revealing about the present as it is about the past with which it is purportedly dealing. Three. Western, Euro-centric, White-superiority norms are pervasive. Hence, the assumption of the inferiority of others led to a justification of the acts for slavery and colonialism by providing Christian “uplift” and “civilization”. Four. As U.S. historian Rosenstone concludes, "History need not be done on the written page. It can be a mode of thinking that utilizes elements other than the written word: sound, vision, feeling, montage." (Rosenstone, "Visions of History.")

 

SUBVERTING THE PLANTATION-GENRE FILM NORM

 

Five films have been selected in which African and African-Diasporic directors deliberately set out to subvert the Hollywood Plantation-Genre norm:

 

* Marlon Riggs: ETHNIC NOTIONS--documentary analysis of representation

African-American scholar-filmmaker Marlon Riggs analyzes the deliberate, totalitarian mis-representations of images. This dis-information had its specific basis in the justification of the institution of slavery and the follow-up condemnation of Reconstruction. Riggs skillfully mixes disturbing, demeaning popular-culture images of African Americans in film and other graphics with the director's personal off-screen essay narrated by actress Esther Rolle and the on-screen scholarly analyses by eminent Black and White historians. This superb editing illustrates the connection between film content and the national political, economic, and social contexts related to race relations, North and South. The evolution of the images depended on the historical-political-economic-social context: from the Loyal Toms (faithful, contented, happy, servile, docile during slavery) to the Carefree Sambos (irresponsible, definitely not ready for participation in the political process during Reconstruction). Other, equally convincing categories of women, men, and children are Faithful Mammies, Grinning Coons (buffoons), Savage Brutes, and Wide-eyed Pickaninies.

Riggs makes the direct connection between art (cinema et al.) and the historical context of European-American domination of African Americans.. The history scholars conclude that it is those negative popular-culture images of Black folks that determined both negative White perceptions and behavior and negative Black self-images and behavior; they also conclude that those images were intended to justify that behavior. So the context influenced the film industry, and the films, in turn, influenced the context (human behavior and institutions) for most of the 20th century.

 

* Sergio Giral: THE OTHER FRANCISCO-- romantic novel versus economic realities

Cuban filmmaker Sergio Giral draws upon a literal portrayal of the first abolitionist novel in the Americas, “Francisco” --written a few years before the U.S. publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”--to reveal the realities of slavery in a parallel docudrama format. In contrast to the romantic depiction in the novel, the realities of slave rebellion are graphically and consistently on the minds and in the hearts of enslaved Africans on Cuban plantations. Slaves used escape, arson, infanticide, murder, sabotage, and other means of resistance at their disposal. It was a film Hollywood dared not make.

 

 * Guy Deslauriers: THE MIDDLE PASSAGE-- poetic historic documentary of the trans-Atlantic crossing

Martiniquean director Guy Deslauriers draws upon the novel of fellow Martiniquean Patrick Chamoiseau and the written narration of acclaimed African-American novelist Walter Mosley to produce this magnificent example of pan-African-Diasporic collaboration. The filmmaker uses a poetic, voice-over narration, with a dramatic, visual reconstruction, to illustrate the horrors, the suffering, and the inhuman conditions faced by captured Africans as they were taken across the Atlantic to the Americas. Despite the harassing life down in the dark, dank hole of the ship, where humans are packed like sardines, the surviving human beings are re-born to form a new humanity: “A new man will emerge into the alien sun of this New World.”

 

*  Gordon Parks: SOLOMON NORTHUP’S ODYSSEY: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE—one of Hollywood’s first truthful films about slavery

Gordon Parks, pioneering African-American photographer, composer, and film director-producer-script writer, helps break the Hollywood silence about the realities of slavery in the U.S.A. The director draws upon a published autobiography of a northern-born carpenter-musician Solomon Northup, "Twelve Years a Slave," to present Northrop's life chronologically from “freedom” in the North to slavery in the South and back to “freedom” in the North. A melodramatic narrative, following the usual Hollywood formula, this film, nevertheless, is pioneering:  one of the first Hollywood films to portray slavery honestly, the first Hollywood movie to portray the trickery of bounty hunters searching for Blacks to return to or to put into enslavement or re-enslavement, and one of the first to portray a happy, functional, cohesive African-American family despite economic challenges. Solomon is a dignified, literate carpenter, who moonlighting as an accomplished fiddler is wooed to Washington, D.C., for his musical talent, but is instead kidnapped and locked in chains in the U.S. capital. 

 

 * Haile Gerima: SANKOFA-- magnificent experimental poetic film essay by a Pan-African ideologue.

 Filmmaker-college professor, Ethiopia-born and U.S.-educated Haile Gerima has directed, produced, and scripted an independent film, SANKOFA, that managed to penetrate the urban, African-American market through non-traditional distribution-exhibition techniques. This politically engaged filmmaker, using a poetic, non-narrative, off-screen voice-over, had a remarkable effect on African-American urban populations when it was released independently in 1993. His highly artistic and anti-slavery/anti-slave trade film, with a contemporary, Pan-African perspective, has become a cult film among African Americans.

 

LOOKING AHEAD

 

Fueled by their liberation movements, filmmakers from Africa and the African Diaspora brought new visions and new insights as they began to subvert the dominant Hollywood model, both in content and in form. In this next stage of using film to break the silence about slavery and the slave trade, how can Black filmmakers--with their allies--move ahead to develop strategies and tactics to continue the unfinished business on the long road ahead? What roles can Black filmmakers and their allies play in remembering and purging the human barbarities of the past while providing positive insight into the dysfunctional legacies of the present? What does the future hold? Collaborating with UNESCO, ZIFF, and other concerned, committed institutions and individuals, what next steps need Black filmmakers take to institutionalize the operation of breaking the silence? The dream continues....