L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema by Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart (review)

L.A. Rebellion, Creating a New Black Cinema focuses on only one part of the L.A. Rebellion Project that was launched in 2009 by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, funded by the Getty Foundation and aiming to create a comprehensive archive of the works created by L.A. Rebellion filmmakers. The book contributes to the archival effort by collecting a selection of articles drawn from an academic conference organized in 2011 and by providing a record of oral histories with filmmakers involved in L.A. Rebellion.

The book is a welcomed attempt at theorizing the concept of L.A. Rebellion—the term coined by Clyde Taylor in reference to the revolutionary instinct of those filmmakers who, while studying filmmaking techniques at UCLA, intended to create a new black cinema. Taylor's preface conveys the enthusiastic excitement of the period as an academic whose political commitment translated into writing about African and Black independent films before he created the African Film Society in 1975. Sharing intimate memories about his own experience as a scholar accompanying budding filmmakers into the struggle for a "fabulous cinematic liberation" (xxi), Taylor's emotional testimony encapsulates the tone of this collection, reflecting the humanistic endeavor and the political commitment that tied L.A. Rebellion filmmakers together.

The introduction depicts the ideological context behind the emergence of L.A. Rebellion filmmakers, presenting the goals of individuals involved in common efforts to humanize Black people on screen by "emancipating the image" (1). The editors explain that the students who met at film school were driven by the same concerns of using film as a medium to correct the stereotypical images of blackness created by Hollywood. Inspired by the Latin American Third Cinema movement (decrying neocapitalism, capitalism, and Hollywood as entertainment to make money), the students were driven by the desire to elaborate a distinctive cinematic style to provide an accurate portrayal of black life conditions—including "the economic status of their subjects as the result of structural oppression" (4). The introduction emphasizes the community work that buttressed the development of L.A. Rebellion, underlining the pivotal role of UCLA faculty member Elyseo Taylor in the Media Urban Crisis Committee (MUCC) devising programs targeting minority students. The authors further underline diversity among the students enrolled at UCLA by giving a short biography of those whose names have since become famous—Larry Clark, Haile Gerima, Jamaa Fanaka, Billy Woodberry, Ben Caldwell, Bernard Nicholas, Don Amis, Robert Wheaton, O. Funmilayo Makarah, Alile Sharon Larkin, and Julie Dash, among others. The time span covered extends from 1969 to the 1980s—with Zeinabu Irene Davis being designated as the "last flame" of the L.A. Rebellion (19); also included is a non-exhaustive thematic list of the films produced. The editors present a coherent body of work through defining common preoccupations among the filmmakers, evoking the relationship between various films and the local political context. The 1970s were a period of awakening which accounts for the revolutionary impulse of the L.A. Rebellion students; however, it is not clear how the 1980s influenced later filmmakers of the movement. In other words, readers may wonder to what extent Davis's filmmaking practice and learning relate to that of Charles Burnett, who was the first African American director to emerge from the program. The articles of the collection answer this question while raising other points that indicate possibilities for further research.

Chuck Kleinhans enlightens L.A. Rebellion through a close look at the productions of three filmmakers whose work is characteristically ingrained with the experience of the local community: Don Amis, Caroll Parrott Blue, and Ben Caldwell exemplify the meaning of L.A. Rebellion as "a lived concept, a perceived bond, common experience in a shared historical moment" (68). Their films translate the identity politics of the time including through the filming of mask-making activities in...