The L.A. Rebellion: A Politics of Love, A Politics of Resistance (original) (raw)

2016

Abstract

In this paper, I articulate a theory of political self-making developed in certain films and filmmaking practices of the post-Civil Rights era “L.A. Rebellion” film movement. While films identified with this movement offer images and narratives of radical resistance, I argue that many also position Black struggle as exceeding the limits of radicality and militancy. I specifically examine the cinematic language of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978), Haile Gerima’s Bush Mama (1979), and Alile Sharon Larkin’s A Different Image (1982), which exposes struggle as the very condition of Black life in the United States, and renders everyday acts as acts of resistance. These films echo what Black feminists such as Audre Lorde and June Jordan began to posit during the same time period: That everyday acts of enduring are acts of great courage, that loving Blackness in a culture based on anti-Black hate is radical, and that conscious cultivation of and caring for alternatives to that hate ...

Jamie A Rogers hasn't uploaded this paper.

Let Jamie know you want this paper to be uploaded.

Ask for this paper to be uploaded.