Online Lecture: "The Speculative Archive: Early African American Cinema and Film Historiography"

While African Americans produced films starting around 1909, no prints or fragments survive prior to 1920. This cinematic absence—a lost decade—is a great challenge for Black visual historiography, but also offers an opportunity for a more flexible and imaginative reconstruction of Black filmmaking practices. I'm interested in how what we can't see informs what we do see - and what happens when we focus on these zones of absence. (Visit CVC website for full lecture abstract and biography).