The_Political_Economy_Of_Black_Film

The Political Economy Of Black Film (Race in Contemporary American Cinema: Part 4) by Jesse Algeron Rhines Cineaste v21, n3 (Summer, 1995):38 For most of the last three decades, African-American filmmakers have waged a struggle to become part of the Hollywood system. The economic and political realities of that battle are relevant to African-American filmmakers today who are debating whether Hollywood remains the best, or indeed the exclusive, means to reach a mass audience. The breakthrough period for black cinema came in the late 1960s, when the industry had severe economic problems stemming from a mature television industry and the continuing complications of the 1948 Paramount Consent Decree in which a U.S. government suit forced the major Hollywood studios to divest their interests in both film production and exhibition. Social pressures arose from liberal concern within the film industry to respond in some visible manner to the massive civil rights movement, then at its height. The most obvious result of these factors was that in 1969 Gordon Parks became the first black director of a Hollywood film, The Learning Tree. The following year, Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baad-asssss Song opened the 'blaxploitation' era. From 1969 through the mid-1970s, white-owned distribution companies released an average of fifteen films, black, new, film, released, filmmakers, year, hollywood, african-american, theater, television, production, industry, independent, distributors, white, theaters, profit, owned, cable, blockbusters, african-americans, theatrical, spike, small, screens, paramount, one, now, line, first, fact, exhibition, era, dollars, distribution