Terri Francis - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Terri Francis
Transition, 2013
Entertainment and history are uneasy companions, and the discourse that surrounded Django Unchain... more Entertainment and history are uneasy companions, and the discourse that surrounded Django Unchained debated much of this dilemma; how can film use—and not abuse—history? Film scholar Terri Francis probes the question.
African Studies Review, 2021
Film Quarterly, 2018
This interview focuses on Cheryl Dunye's views of the industry from her current position in p... more This interview focuses on Cheryl Dunye's views of the industry from her current position in prestige television, working as a director for Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey's Queen Sugar (OWN, 2016–). The forward-looking conversation concentrates less on Dunye's past films but rather on the work she is doing today in episodic television, her creative process, and her legacy for future generations of media makers. By asking Dunye about her upbringing and early influences, I sought a renewed sense of the groundbreaking filmmaker as a person beyond the characters and constructed intimacies she presents in her films and an understanding of her aims today in episodic television.
MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2005
... Terri Francis <terri.francis@yale.edu> teaches in the Film Studies Program and the Depa... more ... Terri Francis <terri.francis@yale.edu> teaches in the Film Studies Program and the Department of African American Studies at Yale University. ... For example, black vaudevillian James Grundy appeared in James Grundy, [no. 1]/Buck and Wing Dance, James Grundy, [no. ...
Film History, 2011
Under the direction of Martin Rennalls, the Jamaica Film Unit aimed to make educational films for... more Under the direction of Martin Rennalls, the Jamaica Film Unit aimed to make educational films for, by and about Jamaicans. Drawing upon close analysis of selected films, an interview with Rennalls, and press reports in The Daily Gleaner, this essay shows how available sound technology challenged the Unit's goals during Jamaica's pre-independence years, 1951-1961.
Black Camera, 2010
... Directors Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, and Lee Daniels have become celebrities in their own right,... more ... Directors Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, and Lee Daniels have become celebrities in their own right, partly due to their capacity to produce ... early work, Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968), Wa-termelon Man (1970), and Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song (1971), Ossie Davis's Cotton ...
Black Camera, 2012
Michael Roemer and Robert Young's fictional drama Nothing But a Man makes America's civil... more Michael Roemer and Robert Young's fictional drama Nothing But a Man makes America's civil rights history intelligible for contemporary audiences. Young's photography relies less on wide observational, contextual angles than on close, "myopic" framing of the face. The political conflicts represented in the film are rendered as highly personal ones between neighbors, friends, and family members who face off in a cauldron heated by historical forces.
Black Camera, 2013
The Afrosurrealist Film Society is an imaginary collective of artist-intellectuals who engage fil... more The Afrosurrealist Film Society is an imaginary collective of artist-intellectuals who engage film in its varied forms and transnational histories. Animated by Amiri Baraka’s chant “AfroSurreal Expressionism,” we seek through our creations an entirely different world, a marvelous world, that lies just beneath the surface of this one—its vernaculars, its haunts, and oh, its delights and curiosities. We draw upon an electric mashup of folklore, history, (sub) consciousness and location in order to engage representations and refractions of reality through film’s necessary framings and inevitable distortions. Sensual in all we do. Industrious and tenacious, we retreat whenever possible for contemplation, conversation and creativity. Black Liberation! And Beauty. Abstraction. With roots.
Transition, 2013
Entertainment and history are uneasy companions, and the discourse that surrounded Django Unchain... more Entertainment and history are uneasy companions, and the discourse that surrounded Django Unchained debated much of this dilemma; how can film use—and not abuse—history? Film scholar Terri Francis probes the question.
African Studies Review, 2021
Film Quarterly, 2018
This interview focuses on Cheryl Dunye's views of the industry from her current position in p... more This interview focuses on Cheryl Dunye's views of the industry from her current position in prestige television, working as a director for Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey's Queen Sugar (OWN, 2016–). The forward-looking conversation concentrates less on Dunye's past films but rather on the work she is doing today in episodic television, her creative process, and her legacy for future generations of media makers. By asking Dunye about her upbringing and early influences, I sought a renewed sense of the groundbreaking filmmaker as a person beyond the characters and constructed intimacies she presents in her films and an understanding of her aims today in episodic television.
MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2005
... Terri Francis <terri.francis@yale.edu> teaches in the Film Studies Program and the Depa... more ... Terri Francis <terri.francis@yale.edu> teaches in the Film Studies Program and the Department of African American Studies at Yale University. ... For example, black vaudevillian James Grundy appeared in James Grundy, [no. 1]/Buck and Wing Dance, James Grundy, [no. ...
Film History, 2011
Under the direction of Martin Rennalls, the Jamaica Film Unit aimed to make educational films for... more Under the direction of Martin Rennalls, the Jamaica Film Unit aimed to make educational films for, by and about Jamaicans. Drawing upon close analysis of selected films, an interview with Rennalls, and press reports in The Daily Gleaner, this essay shows how available sound technology challenged the Unit's goals during Jamaica's pre-independence years, 1951-1961.
Black Camera, 2010
... Directors Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, and Lee Daniels have become celebrities in their own right,... more ... Directors Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, and Lee Daniels have become celebrities in their own right, partly due to their capacity to produce ... early work, Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968), Wa-termelon Man (1970), and Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song (1971), Ossie Davis's Cotton ...
Black Camera, 2012
Michael Roemer and Robert Young's fictional drama Nothing But a Man makes America's civil... more Michael Roemer and Robert Young's fictional drama Nothing But a Man makes America's civil rights history intelligible for contemporary audiences. Young's photography relies less on wide observational, contextual angles than on close, "myopic" framing of the face. The political conflicts represented in the film are rendered as highly personal ones between neighbors, friends, and family members who face off in a cauldron heated by historical forces.
Black Camera, 2013
The Afrosurrealist Film Society is an imaginary collective of artist-intellectuals who engage fil... more The Afrosurrealist Film Society is an imaginary collective of artist-intellectuals who engage film in its varied forms and transnational histories. Animated by Amiri Baraka’s chant “AfroSurreal Expressionism,” we seek through our creations an entirely different world, a marvelous world, that lies just beneath the surface of this one—its vernaculars, its haunts, and oh, its delights and curiosities. We draw upon an electric mashup of folklore, history, (sub) consciousness and location in order to engage representations and refractions of reality through film’s necessary framings and inevitable distortions. Sensual in all we do. Industrious and tenacious, we retreat whenever possible for contemplation, conversation and creativity. Black Liberation! And Beauty. Abstraction. With roots.