By Susan Green
Filmmaker Robert C. Banks, who presented a selection of short films during the Athens International Film and Video Festival, is among the group of practitioners and scholars participating in the commemorative "Black Cinema Aesthetics: Issues in Contemporary Black Film" symposium. Beginning at 9 a.m. in Scripps Auditorium on Saturday, May 3, the event is free and open to the public.
The symposium honors one of the earliest gatherings of scholars, filmmakers and archivists to discuss Black Cinema. "Black Cinema Aesthetics: Issues in Independent Black Filmmaking," was organized by Vattel T. Rose, then director of the Department of African American Studies and took place at Ohio University in 1980.
Black Cinema Aesthetics, also sponsored by the Department of African American Studies and organized by Keith Harris, assistant professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, brings together Ohio University students and faculty in film, visual culture and Africana studies with artists and scholars to discuss contemporary practices and issues in Black Film.
Participants include eminent film scholar Gladstone Yearwood, film director Pearl Bowser, actress BarbaraO, Michelle Wallace, Ed Guerrero, Mia Mask, Austin Allen, Mii Owoo, Esiaba Irobi, Maura Keefe, Akil Houston, Travis Gatling, Jeff Wray, Robert Banks and Michelle Davis.
A new area of study at Ohio University will also be introduced during the symposium: Africana Visual Aesthetics.
The program, a collaboration between the Department of African American Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Arts and the School of Film, moves beyond the African presence in the United States to include the Americas and the Caribbean, a shift that reflects the global presence of people of African descent.
Harris, one of the designers of the program, says it also reflects a change in focus within the Department of African American Studies. In addition to taking courses on semiotics and film theory, students will be able to study Africana literature and 20th century Africana diasporic history.
Susan Green is a writer with University Communications and Marketing.
