at theFree Admission
pays tribute to selected talented Black actresses who made history in the 70's playing fierce, phenomenal and powerful women in breakthrough roles. These women transcended the dominant culture's opinion at the time that Black actresses could only play roles mired in subjugation, relegating them to snapshots of victimization, servitude and degradation.
This panel unpacks the racial and sexual politics of Blaxploitation's African-American pop princesses. It examines the reasons behind the rise in popularity of that era's cinema, along with a scrutiny of the kind of roles Black actresses were offered and played. Did these roles empower or degrade Black women? Were these roles stereotypical ones, or breakthrough art? And, how has these 70's screen sirens impacted and influenced Black actresses today? Have they inherited the Blaxploitation legacy and has it informed their work? Finally what is the legacy of the roles Black actresses played on their career today? Have they been hurt or helped by that era's cinematic work? This panel includes a screening of the film Black Girl followed up with a panel discussion with the films screen writer J.E. Franklin and Dr. Yvonne D. Sims.
Black Girl celebrates the aspirations of three generations of women who strive for a better life. Billie Jean has dropped out of school and secretly taken a job as a dancer in a local bar, her ultimate goal is to become a ballet dancer. But her ambitions bring her into conflict with her envious sisters, both of whom have been locked into dreary marriages too early, and her mother, who has given up on her own children and now lavishes her care and affection on her foster daughters industrious girls to whom she has transferred her own frustrated hopes. Billie Jean must fight a multiplicity of challenges family issues, sex, racism and classism to win an education and forge her own identity. But with her grandmother's strength and trust to embolden her, Billie Jean breaks free, establishing at last a tenuous but hopeful relationship with her mother and taking the first sure steps toward a life of her own making.
The stellar cast include actors Ruby Dee, Leslie Uggams, Louis Stubbs, Brock Peters and Loretta Greene.
Bio - J. E. Franklin
J.E. Franklin is a native of Houston and a graduate of the University of Texas. She is the recipient of a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Drama Desk Award, two Creative Artist Public Service grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of a non-fiction book, Black Girl: From Genesis To Revelations, an autobiographical account of the development of her first major work from video to stage to screen. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, a Fellow of the Writers Guild of America East, and the PEN American Center, and in 1981 was a Eugene O'Neill Fellow at the National Playwrights Conference. Ms. Franklin's work has been performed at the Theatre of the Open Eye (New York), the George Street Playhouse (New Brunswick, NJ), and at the McGinn-Cazale/Second Stage (New York), which, in its 1984-85 season, produced Black Girl among its American Classics revival series. Her other plays include The Prodigal Sister, Under Heaven's Eye Til Cockcrow, Throw Thunder at this House, and several episodes from her octet of plays about the adolescent experience, among which are Christchild, Borderline Fool, and Where Dewdrops of Mercy Shine Bright. The last two had their world premieres at Rites & Reason Theatre, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Ms. Franklin is also the author of The Book of Hagar, a work on institutional white racism, and Gray Panthers, a decatet of ten-minute plays. She is currently the director of the Zora Neale Hurston Writer's Workshop of the New Federal Theatre. Ms. Franklin is the mother of a teenage daughter, Malika, who is a professional actress and has been seen in numerous commercials.
Yvonne D. Sims completed her Ph.D in American Culture Studies with an emphasis in Film and Women’s Studies from Bowling Green State University. Women of Blaxploitation: How the Black Action Heroine Changed American Popular Culture is her first book. She published an article “From Headscarves to Afros: Redefining African American Femininity in Selected 1970s Black Action Films” in Ethnic Media: Taking Control edited by Guy Meiss and Alice Tait. Although she remains extremely interested in blaxploitation, the role of African American actresses within the genre and how contemporary Black Popular Culture particularly hip hop music is has been largely influenced by blaxploitation, Yvonne’s ongoing research delves into the social constructions of race, gender and class in film. She is particularly interested in how women of color filmmakers in the Diaspora negotiate race, gender, class, sexuality and economic control in an industry that largely renders them invisible. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of American & Ethnic Studies at Penn State-Harrisburg.
at theAdmission $15
- A Conversation with Nicole Franklin, Director of Double Dutch Divas and Kim Singleton, Director of Scorned
Double Dutch Divas and Scorned
Larry Banks and Ronnie Wheeler
