Cuando Hollywood encontró a Harlem. Caminos para la creación de un nuevo modelo de representación de la identidad afroamericana en el cine de los estudios (1970-1971)

Fernández Meneses, Jara (2011) Cuando Hollywood encontró a Harlem. Caminos para la creación de un nuevo modelo de representación de la identidad afroamericana en el cine de los estudios (1970-1971). Secuencias. Revista de historia del cine., 33, 29-51. (doi:10.15366/secuencias2011.33.002).

Abstract

Assuming a historical approach, this text focuses on the strategies used by American cinema to elaborate a new model of representation of the Afro-American identity in the early seventies. Through the analysis of the socio-political and economic context of the period, this text examines the two main issues we should take into consideration to explain this fact: the crisis in the cinema industry in the late sixties and the rising of a new conscience within the afroamerican civil rights movement at the beginning of the seventies. Three films are used to illustrate the construction of this new model and the principal attributes of this unusal visibility of the Afro- American experience: Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davies, 1970), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971) and Shaft (Gordon Parks, 1971). Through a comparison of the way in which the Afro-American identity was represented in these films and in the previous decades, this text attempts to demostrate how and why the Hollywood industry changed its attitude towards the Afro-American community.

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Contributors

Author: Jara Fernández Meneses

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