What Happened to Kasi Lemmons?: Investigating the Invisibility of African American Women in the Hollywood Director's Chair
This paper is an interpretive study that addresses the marginality of African American women filmmakers in mainstream cinema. Films that ignore the contribution of African American women fail to encompass enriching stories with complex characters, situations and issues relating to the Black experience. Kasi Lemmons, an African-American woman director, serves as an example of the black woman filmmaker's marginality through both her filmic productions, Eve's Bayou (1997) and The Caveman's Valentine (2001). I specifically address how the narrative, cinematic structure and political economy contributes to the marginality of Lemmons and other African American women in Hollywood. I utilize Black Feminist Theory as a conceptual framework to discuss the invisibility of black women filmmakers in Hollywood.
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
Broadcast Journalism
Research Advisor:
Norman Denzin
Department of Research Advisor:
Institute of Communications Research
Year of Publication:
2003