‘The Blackest Disney Movie of All Time!’: A Goofy Movie and the Production of ‘Film Blackness’

Animation ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
A. Joseph Dial
Keyword(s):  
Black Music ◽  
Black Film ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
High Regard ◽  
Hearts And Minds

Disney films have a distinct way of always feeling in-time, a sensation the company understands and monetizes. A Goofy Movie (AGM) was released in 1995, and since its theatrical release, the film has continued to capture the hearts and minds of a cult audience of passionate fans. Among this array of fans is a core of Black millenials who hold the film in high regard due to its R&B soundtrack and relatable narrative. However, the moments of Black representation within the film are less interesting than how a Black reading becomes possible. What are the component parts of the film’s making when arranged in such a way that invokes an essential Black lifeworld? AGM affixes Blackness to its form not through any profound representation of race. Rather, considering its animators as technical performers, the dark history behind the American cartoon, and how Black music is used to not just make Blackness known but believable instantiate what Michael Gillespie terms, ‘film Blackness’ in Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film (2016).

Film Noir

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Luhr
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Black Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Films ◽  
Multiple Media ◽  
Aesthetic Distance

Film noir is a term coined by French critics in 1946 to describe what they considered an emerging and exciting trend in Hollywood films—one that signaled a new maturity in American cinema. The term translates into English as “black film,” and the darkness to which it refers applies both to the grim themes and events in many of these movies, as well as to their dark look. Many of them deal with doomed characters entangled in immoral and/or criminal activities that go horribly wrong. Such characters lose their psychological mooring and become increasingly desperate, and the depiction of that desperation can at times destabilize the traditional securities and aesthetic distance of the viewer from the events of the film. The cinematography of many of these movies often features images crisscrossed with ominous shadows and filled with dark, mysterious spaces. This article explores the origins of the genre in the 1940s, major influences upon it, its development and many transformations, its intersections with other genres, its place in Hollywood history as well as postwar American culture, its frequent bouts with industry censorship, reasons for the difficulties that critics encounter with defining it, its ongoing popularity, and its extensive influence upon multiple media.

The Black Film Ambassador

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-69
Author(s):  
Josslyn Luckett
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Film Festival ◽  
Black Film ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Latin American Cinema ◽  
Global Reach

In celebration of the Pacific Film Archive at 50, Josslyn Luckett, a former student of PFA programmer and UCBerkeley professor Albert Johnson reflects on the global reach of his career and legacy. One of the founding “co-conspirators” of Film Quarterly, Johnson presented African, Asian, and Latin American cinema at the PFA for three decades, while programming U.S. directors from Vincente Minnelli to Melvin Van Peebles across the globe. While Johnson became known for his iconic “Craft of Cinema” profile series at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF), this article highlights under-acknowledged aspects of his film curation and writing, including his early championing of many of the independent Black directors known now as the L.A. Rebellion.

Ken Russell's Wartime Imagery

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Flanagan
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Films ◽  
Personal Style ◽  
American Cinema ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World ◽  
Wartime Experience ◽  
National Experience

This article traces Ken Russell's explorations of war and wartime experience over the course of his career. In particular, it argues that Russell's scattered attempts at coming to terms with war, the rise of fascism and memorialisation are best understood in terms of a combination of Russell's own tastes and personal style, wider stylistic and thematic trends in Euro-American cinema during the 1960s and 1970s, and discourses of collective national experience. In addition to identifying Russell's recurrent techniques, this article focuses on how the residual impacts of the First and Second World Wars appear in his favoured genres: literary adaptations and composer biopics. Although the article looks for patterns and similarities in Russell's war output, it differentiates between his First and Second World War films by indicating how he engages with, and temporarily inhabits, the stylistic regime of the enemy within the latter group.

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