# data[].attributes.body
- Entertainment industry is FILLED with black actors, actress, producers and screen writers.
- For example, Shonda Rhimes is a talented television producer, screenwriter and author
- Some of her work includes How to Get Away with Murder, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and Bridgeton
- Others include Spike Lee who recently won an Oscar for BlackKKlansman and Jordan Peele known for his comedy and most recent films Us, and Get Out

# data[].attributes.body
- First African American to be nominated for an Emmy
- Had a lead role on the first TV series that centered around an African American woman who was not a domestic worker
- Wanted a black woman to star in a big-budget TV soap opera, so she made a way for herself to accomplish goal

# data[].attributes.body
- Hollywoods first major black director
- Got started in the arts industry as a photographer
- Taught himself how to take photos and quickly became famous for portraits and fashion photography
- Moved to Chicago, started focusing on depicting life of people living in impoverished Chicago South Side
- Became a photographer for Life magazine
- Moved into film
- Directed a series of documentaries about black urban life for National Education Television
- Became first African American to direct a major motion picture: Adaptation of his book The Learning Tree (1968)
- Directed, produced, and wrote the screenplay and musical score
- Directed "Shaft" (1971), major success, gave rise to a new genre of African American action films known as blaxploitation which often cast black actors in major roles

# data[].attributes.body
- Directed over a dozen films while working in Hollywood
- Most well-known for his film "Sweet Sweetback's Baad*sssss Song" (1971) which he wrote, directed, and acted in
- Told the story of one black man's fight against white authority
- Used mostly his own money to fund it and could largely only hire nonprofessional actors/technicians
- Becomes one of the most successful films of 1971, $15 million in box-office sales
- This film helped initiate a new wave of black cinema, showed that a film featuring an African-American lead could be successful in theaters

# data[].attributes.body
- Prominent American documentary filmmaker, as well as an activist, teacher and organizer
- Focused on African American social and political issues and African American cultural figures (ex: Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson)
- Made over 40 films in his 36 year career, including documentaries for HBO, PBS, NBC, CBS, the BBC, the Sundance Channel, and National Geographic
- Most known for his film "Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks" (2000)
- His work inspired many to enter the field
- Worked as a mentor to many young artists
- Got started in the field when it was still very limited for black people
- His works focused on racial issues, but from an African American perspective, which was rare at the time

# data[].attributes.body
- Played John Shaft in "Shaft" movie (first mainstream Hollywood blaxploitation film)
- Character in Shaft was revolutionary: black actor playing a confident and cool character, inspired the film industry to develop characters like this one
- Considered the first black action hero
- Nominated for a Golden Globe in 1972

# data[].attributes.body
- "Queen of blaxploitation"
- Rejected ideas of feminine stereotypes through her movie characters and in her relationships
- Helped create "the market for films about women fighting back"
- Emphasized mindset that different races could enjoy each other's cultures

# data[].attributes.body
- Black lead actor (Richard Roundtree), composer (Isaac Hayes), and director (Gordon Parks)
- Twelfth most successful film of the year- attracted black and white audiences
- "Opened the door to black actors and directors"
- Outlived all other blaxploitation films

# data[].attributes.body
- All-black version of The Wizard of Oz
- Starring Ted Ross, Diana Ross, Nipsey Russell, Michael Jackson, and Richard Pryor
- First musical film geared towards black audiences
- Film did not do well in the theaters, but black audiences saw themselves and their culture portrayed on the screen in a completely new way

Link to trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtnHaEK66s

# data[].attributes.headline
Definition: Where is the future of the blacks in America? 

# data[].attributes.subject
Definition: Where is the future of the blacks in America? 

# data[].attributes.body
Afrofuturism, coined by critic Mark Derry in his famous 1993 essay "Black to the Future," celebrates the historical significance of African diaspora and imagines the possibilities of positioning the African descendants and their culture in the center of the cosmos.

# data[].attributes.body
- Movies and television is all about telling a story
- Historical films and television has allowed African Americans to share their history, but also catch people's attention with realistic reenactment
- Often times Black stories go unnoticed, but many black stars have used their fame to tell these stories
- From slavery, the civil rights movement and wrongfully convicted inmates, film has allowed African Americans to raise awareness about their struggle with racial equality
- Popular ones include Selma, Hidden Figures, The Help, Twelve Years a Slave, and Antebellum

# data[].attributes.body
- African American Influence on Film has also led to more representation
- Prior to their big break, it was difficult to find very many positive Black figures in American television. Instead they were often the villain or side character.
- In films like Shaft, black youth finally had a main character that looked like them they could idolize.
- Often underrepresented in a number of places, Black people have used film to share stories, but also represent different identities
- A show on HBO called POSE, highlights the struggles of lower class black LGTBQ+ individuals during the AIDS epidemic.

# data[].attributes.body
In the years between 1954 and 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr gained national recognition as an activist for racial injustice and human rights, which sparked a revolutionary movement—the Black Power Movement.

This movement, a demonstration of racial pride, called for social, political, and economic changes to generate the black power within white communities. It also demanded for incorporation of black history in school curriculum, embracement of black culture in the society, and dissemination of newly arisen artistic expressions to display the identity of blackness.

The term can be traced back to author Richard Wright's nonfiction work Black Power, published in the 1954. In 1965, Lowndes County [Alabama] Freedom Organization used the slogan "Black power for black people."

The movement reached to its peak in 1966 accompanied with the emergences of the institutions against police brutality and violence. One of the prominent organizations was the Black Panther Party for Self-defense (BPP).

# data[].attributes.body
- First black male to win the Academy Award for Best Actor/to be a film star for both white and black audiences
- First film ("No Way Out. No Way Out") made him a hero in the Bahamas (where he was from)- colonial government censored the film and subsequent protests led to the creation of the political party that would eventually overturn British rule
- Starred in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"- first Hollywood movie with an interracial couple that did not end tragically
- Addressed racial inequality in several of his film characters

# data[].attributes.body
Under white conformity, blackness in the society was considered as “inferior” and “ugly.” It was not until the 1960s that the occurrence of the “Black is Beautiful” movement emancipated black identity with the “freedom that comes from no longer trying emulate white beauty standards.” This movement enables the public to recognize the beauty of the natural hairstyle, such as Afro, darker shades of skin color, unique hair textures, and physical shapes in the African American community.

# data[].attributes.body
"Hotep" in Egyptian means "to be at peace." The traumatic transatlantic experience of African Americans and the erasure of their cultural history led to the rise of “Hotep culture”—the adaption to Egyptian culture and legacy to reconstruct the memories of homeland and establish a sense of black superiority. Egypt with one of the oldest civilizations and influential cultures from Africa ignited the desire and imagination of African Americans in reformulating the historical narrative to honor their black heritage around Egyptian mythology.

Dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh with pan-American hats and togas, Sun Ra, who named himself as “Le Sony’ r Ra” after the Egyptian sun god, is an avant-garde Jazz musician, a professor taught “Sun Ra 171” in Afro-American studies at University of California, Berkeley, and the most influential figure in the history of Afrofuturism. Aspired to break black conciousness from victimhood, Sun Ra created the metaphorical expression, “black knowledge society,” a utopian society built by the blacks in outer space with their knowledge of Science and technology, to free the black conciousness towards psychological liberation and empowerment.

During his years as a performing artist and musician, Sun Ra considered the surrounding world made of “patterns of energy” that can only be “coordinated through music and engagement with the technologies that produced it”. In his experimentations with technologies of musical production, he envisioned to integrate new flows of energy into the band to bring them “in tune with nature and nature’s vibration.”

# data[].attributes.body
In his famous film, Space is the Place, Sun Ra presents the story of his return to earth after the discovery of an unusual planet where he believes would be “harmonically suitable” for the black race. Landed in Oakland, California, Sun Ra begins to share his prophetic vision and ideology beyond the construction of race and capitalism. Later on, he calls for leaving the doomed planet earth to find the “great tomorrow.” After the destruction of earth, Sun Ra and those who follow him embrace the “Altered Destiny” to their journey to the new planet. This film is monumental in the study of American science fiction cinema and African American film history because it not only ignites the imagination for a planet with the visual elements of the lush jungles and alien life forms with “bells for buds and noise-blowing horns for leaves” but an inquiry to the meaning of outer space—a space of dark hues, a dark void of possibilities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sun Ra: Space is the Place (1974) opening titles

# data[].attributes.headline
“Afronauts, capable of funkitizing galaxies”: George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic 

# data[].attributes.subject
“Afronauts, capable of funkitizing galaxies”: George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic 

# data[].attributes.body
George Clinton, the mastermind behind the 1970s funk collective Parliament-Funkadelic, with his artistic vision included extensive elements of scientific fiction becomes one of the most influential figures in the movement of Afrofuturism.

Heavily influenced by Sun Ra, George Clinton constructed a space age setting in which black characters were the primary protagonists in his musical narratives. During their performances in the 1970s, an enormous UFO “visited” them, emerged from the ceiling as a visual complement to their idea of “Mothership Connection.”

The album cover of “Mothership Connection” of George Clinton himself emerging from a flying saucer was one of the first times in mainstream culture that an African American had been featured in space.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
George Clinton and Parliament - Mothership Connection

# data[].attributes.body
The Brother From Another Planet
"Where are you from? You look like you might be from the South—no way I’m going back there…Sometimes I feel I have been taken for a slave up here, you know they have’em. White slaves. Arabs, like a whole’ nother world up there, whole’ nother planet."

# data[].attributes.body
ethnic subgenera of the exploitation of black film in the 1970s

# data[].attributes.body
shaft, superfly, foxy brown, blacula, Cleopatra Jones etc.

# data[].attributes.body
- provided an escape from racial conflict in America
- ignored poor race relations
- idolized black role models and figures
- unrealistic, inauthentic, inaccurate
- appealed to sex, drugs, and power of the 70s

# data[].attributes.body
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uog2JVpgYVRWxvm_ZvR7qsuojE5opUhrIgXLJnx4d3Y/edit