these violent delights have violent ends

where’s our steamy 60s drama?

where’s our 30s Harlem Renaissance coming of age flick?

where’s our Victorian steampunk sci-fi adventure?

sula by toni morisson is a steamy psychological coming of age drama i’m pretty sure taking place in the 60′s or 50′s, about two black girls in a predominately black town in Ohio, whose lives go in different but parallel directions after sharing a childhood trauma. 

mumbo jumbo is harlem renaissance era post-modern comedy about hougan detective searching for a mysterious suppressed african text, and battling the forces of white supremacy in a conspiracy to undermine black culture going back thousands of years. 

yellow-back radio broke down is a western written like a radio-show about a black cowboy named the lupe garoo kid, and a clear influence on blazing saddles that would come years later.

perdido street station’s main character is a overweight black scientist, living in a Dickensian city of magical steam punk sci fi adventure and multiple sentient races, who is involved in a secret and illegal inter-species relationship with a beetle-headed artist, and on the verge of a breakthrough in unifying magic and science. 

and pym (retro sci-fi/parody/adventure) and zone one (zombie survival horror) are great genre stories, but both are in modern era. this is also excluding afro-futurist  stuff. 

in film there’s 

yeelen - set in ancient africa, about a young man with magic powers on a quest to find his evil sorcerer father. the first real fantasy film in african cinema. black writer, director, and cast. 

daughters of the dust- set in a isolated black community living off the american coast over three generations. the first feature film directed by a black women. black writer, director, and cast. 

harlem nights- harlem renaissance era crime comedy starring three generations of comedy genius. black writer, director, and cast. 

hoodlum- underrated gangster film about black gangsters in harlem. black director and cast

ganja and hess- black vampire art film set in the 70s. black writer, director, and cast. 

chameleon street-  based on a true story about black con man in the 80s who was able to successfully impersonate lawyers, doctors, and professors, spielberg’s “catch me if you can” is essentially white washed version of the same idea. black writer, director, and cast. 

the killer of sheep- neo-realist coming of age film about black lives in 70′s Watts, made originally as a student film thesis. black writer, director, and cast. 

belle is period peace from a black film-maker, but predominately white cast, while beasts of the southern wild, attack the block, the people under the stairs, def by temptation, vampire in brooklyn, and after earth are sci-fi/fantasy/horror films with predominately black casts but not period pieces. Medicine for Melancholy, An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty, and Top Five are conversation driven romantic comedies with black, casts, writers, and directors. 90′s era set coming of age in the wood, the brothers, love and basketball, and upcoming dope.  

i think nearly all other black films fall under Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, 70′s exploitation films, dance movies, 90′s hood films, civil rights & slavery films, musician biopics, African cinema, and pre-Hollywood Race Films, but I might have missed some that don’t fall into these. 

I never have been and I never will be bound by anything I don’t do of my own free will.

Katharine Hepburn in a promotional photo for The Philadelphia Story (1940)

THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) dir. Robert Wise + dancing