ABSTRACT
The explosion of contemporary blach cinema, along with the emergence of hip-hop culture, expresses the pervasive influence of African American styles, sensibilities, and ideas in American popular culture. The narrative strategies that black filmmakers employ, and the images, symbols, and themes black filmmakers present, are important because they embody the coming of age of a new generation of artists dedicated to portraying the complexities and peculiarities of black life. Given the wretched history of often distorted, even racist, representations of black life viewed through the prism of white cultural producers, the rise of a new black cinema promises the articulation of artistic visions of black life beyond the troubled zone of white representational authority and mainstream interpretative dominance.
