ABSTRACT
The realities of Black cinema are as relevant today as they were during the developmental stages of the classical style in the early 1930s when a young African-American film pioneer by the name of Oscar Micheaux was hawking his race movies on 125th Street in Harlem, NY or in the early 1970s when Melvin Van Peebles was “rated X by an all White jury,” and ushered in the blaxploitation cycle. These are the sites of investigation that scholars young and old attempt to unearth and bring forth to study. Yet, we are always drawn to those filmmakers that make films at those precise times we find to be the transformative moments in American film history that tend to garner the majority of attention. A strange irony exists in our own failure to make the obvious connections between the filmmakers whose works often help define the moments. For instance one can easily identify D. W. Griffith as the film pioneer at the epicenter of the birth of the American film industry. One could also make a strong argument for Spike Lee as the filmmaker at the center of the revitalization of the American independent film industry while simultaneously resuscitating Black cinema. Yet Griffith and Lee are often placed as polar opposites with two very different agendas and we fail to see the important similarities. When Griffith and Lee are compared, there are many similarities. That is not to say, however, they both share the same vision, ideology, or growth as filmmakers. The similarities: both are very prolific filmmakers; both generated a lot of audience attention from all Americans, not just audiences within their own race; both were stylistic innovators for their times; both generated social controversy; both will be remembered as major and important American filmmakers for generations to come.
