Academy Museum’s ‘Regeneration’ Exhibit to Cover 73 Years of Black Cinema

thewrap.com:

Regeneration features rarely seen excerpts of films restored by the Academy Film Archive, as well as other narrative films and documentaries; newsreels and home movies; photographs; scripts; drawings; costumes; equipment; posters; and historical materials, such as entrance tickets, note cards, and telegrams; along with augmented reality experiences (AR) designed specifically for the exhibition.”The seven galleries will begin with clips from the 1898 “Something Good – Negro Kiss,” one of the earliest films showing on-screen affection from Black actors.

It will then move to a study of “race films” from 1916 through the 1940s, and a look at segregated movie theaters; a gallery devoted to musicals, particularly ones with all-Black casts; a “Stars and Icons” gallery saluting Black performers from the 1920s through the 1950s; a section devoted to post World War II “freedom movements”; and one exploring post-1960s Black filmmakers Madeline Anderson, Robert L.

Goodwin, William Greaves, Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles.The exhibition was curated by Doris Berger and Rhea Combs in collaboration with directors Charles Burnett and Ava DuVernay, among others.Details from photo at top: Film still from William Selig’s “Something Good – Negro Kiss” (1898), with Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown.

Courtesy of USC HMH Foundation Moving Image Archive; The Nicholas Brothers in a scene from “Stormy Weather” (1943), from left, Fayard Nicholas and Harold Nicholas.