Very few folks have the power to green-light a picture in Hollywood. None of them are black. But these power players are finding a way to make films on their own terms.
by By: Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D.
Blacks and film have been in the news quite a bit as of late. You've got the feud between Tyler Perry and Spike Lee, and the romantic comedy Jumping the Broom not only beating out mainstream romantic comedies but also coming in third behind monster hits Thor and Fast Five during opening weekend. One might wonder how a rom-com could become controversial, but Jumping the Broom did just that when CBS's The Early Show left the "movie that could" out of its summer preview of movies about weddings. Thor courted its share of controversy, with the filmmakers and Idris Elba -- who was cast as Heimdall, a Norse god -- being pummeled by right-wing zealots for "cross-casting." And the complexity of being black and Muslim was examined, finally, in Sultan Sharrief's Bilal's Stand and Qasim Basir's Mooz-lum...[continued]
