Editor's Notes

With this issue we close out a decade of Black Camera's publication as the premier peer review academic journal of its kind in the world. Hurrah, I say!

What's in store for the next decade is hard to predict, except that our subject—filmmaking in the Black diaspora—however many obstacles and some disappointments, is fecund, indeed, robust, ever more engaging, and occasionally spectacularly original.

To the contents of 10.2: Take note and (re)consider our calls for submissions to forthcoming Close-Ups on Cuban cinema and Nina Simone in the cinematic. Next follows two essays: the first by Novotny Lawrence, who revisits and reframes blaxploitation films of the 1970s with an eye to the role of a more recent iteration of that genre, Black Dynamite (dir. Scott Sanders, 2009), "in forging a reductive legacy of the movement." The second essay, Jonathan Wright's nuanced take in real time on the reception of The Birth of a Nation (dir. D. W. Griffith, 1915) in Britain and France, theorized as it is comparative, is particularly relevant to genre and contemporary reception studies.

Two distinct Close-Ups are featured for your consideration. The first, focused on the "New York Scene" of filmmaking circa the 1970s, guest edited by Nicholas Forster and Michele Prettyman, examines the personages and collaborations between Black filmmakers during this significant and experimental period in the "greater" NYC area. For context, see the editors' extensive introduction followed by interviews with Julie Dash and Ayoka Chenzira, and Roy Campanella II; essays on Kathleen Collins's "Cinema of Interiority" and Paul Carter Harrison, statements by Harrison and Thomas Allen Harris, and a piece by Michelle Materre on curating the East Coast segment of the Black Independent Film Movement. Compelling stuff.

The second Close-Up, guest edited by historian Lamont H. Yeakey, engages with Ava DuVernay's historical epic Selma (2014). Yeakey examines the setting, personages, and issues that informed the film, gently challenging several of DuVernay's assumptions while including other protagonists who contributed to the great march in Selma. Of particular note, see Delphine Letort's critical essay adapting history in Selma and the essays by David G. Holmes and Danyelle Greene on Black women's inscription and role in the film.

As always, we welcome Olivier Barlet's contribution to the Africultures Dossier and Beti Ellerson's seminal work on African Women in Cinema Dossier—now a regular feature of Black Camera. In this issue she takes up Senegalese director Safi Faye's defining film Mossane (1996).

In the queue find also a book review and professional resources as you have come to expect.

And we acknowledge and extend our condolences for the recent passing of Professor Frank Ukadike, a distinguished scholar of African cinema.¹

Lastly, I regret the resignation of our colleague Zachary Vaughn, whose professionalism and contributions have been exemplary during his tenure as editorial and production manager of Black Camera. Fortunately, we have Katherine Johnson who fills the breach with equal competency and professionalism. We wish Zach the very best as he will devote his labors to completing the dissertation here at The Media School of Indiana University.