Still Got the News: Fifty Years Out on Finally Got the News

Black Camera invites submissions for a Close-Up devoted to the documentary by the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Finally Got the News (1970).The year 2020 marked the fifty-year anniversary of this film and its resounding vision of radical social change. The time that stands between now and the production of Finally Got the News is one that bears witness to great and devastating changes both in Detroit and internationally as deindustrialization has wreaked havoc on organized labor. Yet, perhaps even more devastating, the racial chauvinism against which the League of Revolutionary Black Workers organized remains a stagnant and destructive feature of our society. For this reason, Finally Got the News’s vision of Black radical organizing and labor militancy remains ever more salient today.

As we reflect on the fifty-year legacy of Finally Got the News and in the wake of nationwide protests against racialized police brutality and growing labor unrest, how does Finally Got the News speak to our present moment? What lessons can we discern from the film and its didactic aesthetics? What influence have artists and militant filmmakers drawn from the example of Finally Got the News? How does the League’s ability to integrate black liberation struggles with workplace organizing find expression in film and how does the League constitute its political vision in the cinematic?

The guest editor welcomes submissions for publication writings that engage with Finally Got the News from a variety of disciplinary and analytical perspectives including essays, commentaries, photo galleries, and interviews. Essays should not exceed 9,000 words and commentaries and interviews 4,000 words. Topics may include Finally Got the News’s production, exhibition, and reception histories, as well as textual analyses of the film. Other suggested lines of inquiry:

• • Mediations of history and memory

• • Black political organizing

• • Labor politics and solidarity

• • On and off screen intersections of race and class

• • Blackness and documentary

• • Avant-garde documentary aesthetics

• • Aesthetics of radical cinema

• • Filmmaking as political education

• • Blues music in film

• • Industrial labor films

• • Media coverage of labor politics and unrest

For your submission, please include completed essay, a 150-word abstract, and a 50–100 word biography by the extended deadline, August 1, 2023. Submissions should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition. See journal guidelines for submission policy details.

https://blackcam.sitehost.iu.edu/call/.

Direct all questions, correspondence, and submissions to guest editor Cole Nelson (cownelso@iu.edu).