The Womanist Documentary: Black Feminist Film Theory Decoded
Throughout film history, the roles of Black women have continually reflected their constructed societal status in America. From the Mammy to the Jezebel, in Hollywood films, Black women lack agency, and function mainly as exaggerated caricatures of deeply embedded ideas about their expendability and degenerate nature. By exploring the application of a Black feminist theoretical framework, this study focuses on how the documentary form contributes to the creation of a collective cinematic consciousness for Black women. The emphasis of this research is on the analysis of womanist documentaries, concentrating on the cinematic context of documentary film, and how principles of Black feminist theory informs a framework which will analyze documentary projects made by and for Black women.
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
Communications
Research Advisor:
Frances Gateward
Department of Research Advisor:
Unit for Cinema Studies
Year of Publication:
2006