Colorization

For decades, representation of the Black experience in films has been marginalized, stifled, inaccurate, and inadequate. In Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, now available in paperback, cultural historian Wil Haygood places the Black experience in the foreground and examines the struggles and triumphs of Black actors and filmmakers as a window into Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. This all-encompassing study provides an...
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For decades, representation of the Black experience in films has been marginalized, stifled, inaccurate, and inadequate. In Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, now available in paperback, cultural historian Wil Haygood places the Black experience in the foreground and examines the struggles and triumphs of Black actors and filmmakers as a window into Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. This all-encompassing study provides an unprecedented look at the history of Black cinema in a white-dominated industry--from Hollywood's first blockbuster The Birth of a Nation (1915), which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, to Gone with the Wind (1939), Imitation of Life (1959), the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, and contemporary films such as Do The Right Thing (1989), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Black Panther (2018). Featuring a powerful new preface that addresses Black filmmakers' ongoing fight for inclusion and the continuing need for cinema to tell more compelling stories about being Black in America, this important, timely volume provides an exceptional history and groundbreaking perspective of Black cinema.