Editor’s Notes

With seven years of publication behind us, welcome to the eighth volume of Black Camera. As with the past successive years of original scholarship, trenchant interviews with the likes of prominent, up-and-coming, and emerging filmmakers working in all manner of genres, along with in-depth Close-Ups, dossiers devoted to African women in film and Francophone cinema, and our archival notes, readers can expect no less in this and future issues of the journal.

Three calls for Close-Ups are featured in this issue inviting submissions: “Beyoncé: Media and Cultural Icon,” “Filming the Fall: Plurality, Social Change, and Innovation in Contemporary Senegalese Cinema,” and “Selma: The Historical Record and the American Imaginary.” The first engaging with Beyoncé’s videos, films, and public persona, as they remark upon race, feminism, performance, and sexuality; the second surveying innovative contemporary filmmakers and their contributions to Senegal’s rich albeit turbulent cinematic tradition; and lastly Oscar-nominated Selma showcasing the significance of historical figures and the cultural impact of cinema to reflect and critique historical activity.

Among the articles included, consider Delphine Letort’s take on the understudied documentary practice of Spike Lee; Toni Pressley-Sanon’s analysis of 1940s zombie movies King of the Zombies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943), analogs of the “monstrous black” manifest in various guises to this day in popular culture; Erica Moiah James’s interrogation of Every Nigger Is a Star (1974), by producer Calvin Lockhart and filmmaker William Greaves; and Karine Blanchon’s meditation on the life, career, and legacy of Malagasy director Benoît Ramampy.

This issue features a Close-Up on black film and black visual culture, guest edited by Keith Harris, that includes Lauren McLeod Cramer on the constitution of a black cinematic archive; Lokeilani Kaimana on a new valence in the archive of black visual culture; Charles Linscott’s intriguing intervention in William Greaves’s experimental film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968) and challenge to recent scholarship that foregrounds the sonic over visual representation; Alessandra Raengo’s working of motility as self-possessing and endowed rather than contingent, examining such factors in Steve McQueen’s Deadpan (1997); and Michael Boyce Gillespie’s interview with filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson.

See, too, the entries in our Africultures Dossier for interviews with African women filmmakers by Olivier Barlet, and our African Women in Cinema Dossier for Beti Ellerson’s feature on African women documentarists. The issue concludes with book reviews and archival notes of interest to our readers. Next and in preparation: Issue 8.2.

Last, Amanda Fleming concludes her tenure as Assistant Editor and moves on to pursue other professional interests. We wish her well. Her replacement, Rachelle Pavelko, who is a doctoral candidate in the Media School at Indiana University, joined the crew effective July. Rachelle’s primary research interests are health communication and media effects. She is currently working on her dissertation, which focuses on how certain mental illnesses are trivialized in the media, and whether the processes of trivialization and stigmatization are related. Rachelle earned her BA in journalism from Ohio Northern University and MA from the University of Memphis, where her focus was on news writing, reporting, and graphic design. Working as a reporter has taught Rachelle that everyone has a story worth sharing if you ask the right questions, which eventually led her to academia to ask many more. Welcome, Rachelle, and welcome back readers to year eight of Black Camera.