L.A. Rebellion Creating a New Black Cinema EDITED BY Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS L.A. Rebellion This page intentionally left blank L.A. Rebellion Creating a New Black Cinema EDITED BY Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www .ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2015 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data L.A. Rebellion : creating a new black cinema / edited by Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-28467-8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-28468-5 (pbl. : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-96043-5 (ebook) 1. African American motion picture producers and directors—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 2. Independent fi lmmakers—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 3. Independent fi lms—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. 4. Experimental fi lms—California—Los Angeles—History—20th century. I. Field, Allyson Nadia, 1976–editor. II. Horak, Jan-Christopher, editor. III. Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma, 1970–editor. pn1995.9.n4l24 2015 791.43089′96073—dc23 2015016337 Manufactured in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 2002) (Permanence of Paper). For Elyseo Taylor and Teshome Gabriel This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface: Once upon a Time in the West . . . L.A. Rebellion Clyde Taylor ix Acknowledgements xxv Introduction: Emancipating the Image—The L.A. Rebellion of Black Filmmakers Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart 1 PART ONE. CRITICAL ESSAYS 55 1 Threads and Nets: The L.A. Rebellion in Retrospect and in Motion Chuck Kleinhans 57 2 Rebellious Unlearning: UCLA Project One Films (1967–1978) Allyson Nadia Field 83 3 Tough Enough: Blaxploitation and the L.A. Rebellion Jan-Christopher Horak 119 4 Anticipations of the Rebellion: Black Music and Politics in Some Earlier Cinemas David E. James 156 5 Re/soundings: Music and the Political Goals of the L.A. Rebellion Morgan Woolsey 171 6 Struggles for the Sign in the Black Atlantic: Los Angeles Collective of Black Filmmakers Michael T. Martin 196 7 Bruising Moments: Aff ect and the L.A. Rebellion Samantha N. Sheppard 225 8 The L.A. Rebellion Plays Itself Jacqueline Najuma Stewart 251 9 Encountering the Rebellion: liquid blackness Refl ects on the Expansive Possibilities of the L.A. Rebellion Films Alessandra Raengo 291 PART TWO. L.A. REBELLION ORAL HISTORIES 319 10 L.A. Rebellion Oral Histories 321 Filmography 355 Selected Bibliography 403 List of Contributors 427 Index 431 PREFACE Once upon a Time in the West . . . L.A. Rebellion CLYDE TAYLOR I’m not a fan of the Big Bang theory where, in one version, the universe explodes from a subatomic particle, much smaller than a pinpoint. But the image of the Big Bang in reverse does capture me, with Total Every- thing spinning in a whirlwind back to this one infi nitesimal spark. In this memory capsule, I want to follow some threads in rewind to cap- ture partial, personal glimpses of the L.A. Rebellion, hoping to focus some particulars of the cultural scenes it swam in and also highlight some threads that its energy small-banged into the cultural fi rmament. A good place to start is the African Film Society. One day in the mid- 1970s, VèVè Clark, my brilliant friend and colleague in UC Berkeley’s Black Studies Department, called me (and eighty others, she said) and said don’t miss the fi lm playing that night at the Pacifi c Film Archive, UC Berkeley’s articulate cinematheque. The fi lm was Haile Gerima’s Harvest: 3,000 Years (1976), a world-class masterpiece easily placed between Chaplin and Kurosawa. I was blown away, as any great fi lm can do to you. But who made this fi lm? Out of what matrix? An Ethio- pian? Before I reached the aisle to exit, I was plotting to know more. Each step down the stadium staircase brought another thought. There must be an association that promotes such fi lms. At the time, I didn’t know three African fi lms, but if more existed, I was going to fi nd and support them. There must be some African fi lm society somewhere. By the third step, my conclusion was fi xed: if there isn’t, I’m going to start one. ix