A treasure chest of Black film

The Black Film Center/Archives has been described as a treasure undiscovered at IU. Located on 10th Street inside the Smith Research building, it is a resource for many students researching black film, black history and black culture.\nAudrey McCluskey, director of the archives, said the center was founded in 1981 to save a dying art form.\n"It started as an attempt to rescue and pursue black history," McCluskey said. "Old films were being kept in people's garages."\nNow the archives boast more than 2,500 movies, documentaries, shorts, posters and interviews, all pertaining to black culture and the black experience. Ketwana Wilson-McCormick, a 2003 graduate assistant and assistant editor of "Black Camera: A Micro Journal of Black Film Studies," a newsletter produced twice each year by the BFC/A containing critiques of old movies, interviews with filmmakers like Spike Lee and articles on how film has affected black culture, said she thinks highly of the BFC/A.\n"I think it has an abundance of material; it is a wealth of information," McCormick said.\nMcCluskey said many students come to the Archives Center to watch a film for class or an assignment, and many instructors use the films in their classes.\n"I think students can access more from watching the films at the Center because if they have more in depth questions about the films, they can really learn from McCluskey answering their questions," McCormick said.\nThe center also receives world-wide attention as result of its Web site. All the films in the archives are listed there. \n"Usually, scholars doing research on black films come here," she said.\nMcCluskey said the Web site has had more than 100,000 hits about every six months, especially from the Arab world. People in Canada, Ghana and West Africa also visit the site. \nThe BFC/A is one of the only Black Center Archives in the United States, McCluskey said.\n"We are truly global. Everybody is interested in black film," she said. "Black film has few experts, and we are one of them."\nThe success of the Black Film Archives can be attributed to the support the BFC/A has received from outside sources. They are funded by internal grants and have also had support from the chancellor.\n"The support we receive isn't necessarily monetary, but sponsors will lend their names to endorse us," she said.\nThe BFC/A has been endorsed by the likes of Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Blair Underwood, Tavis Smiley, Sidney Poitier, Renee Poussaint, Melvin Van Peebles and Spike Lee. \nThe archives have attracted many people to the University and to the BFC/A, said Natasha Vaubel, professor of contemporary black film. Two years ago, Peebles was at IU as an artist-in-resident at the BFC/A and taught a class on script writing. Director Lee has also come to IU to speak and check out the film archives.\n"It brings very important filmmakers here so they can teach the students about the films and interact with them," Vaubel said.\nVaubel said at least four of the filmmakers whose works she shows in her class have come to visit IU and the BFC/A. Vaubel and McCluskey said showing the films from the BFC/A in their classes has enhanced the experience, and the students are able to learn more about the history through film.\nMcCluskey said she feels many black students have very little knowledge about black history and the Black Film Archives is a way for students to learn and engage in discourse.\n"Film becomes a venue for discussion. It gives a chance to talk and have open dialogue about issues facing the black community," she said. "If I lecture about it, you might be interested at first, but then you get bored. If I show you, it affects your conscious in a different way."\nMcCluskey uses some of the films in her class "Africana Women Filmmakers in the Diaspora." McCluskey uses the film to get emphasize her lectures, but also to deconstruct the negative models portrayed in many Hollywood films. \nVaubel said she also uses the films to talk about the history of film and to show how some filmmakers work to deconstruct the essentialist view in films.\n"There is an emphasis on black films counter to Hollywood. We look at old stereotypes continue today in film," Vaubel said.\nMcCluskey said she is not interested in having every black film made and denounces movies like "Booty Call" and "Sprung." She said the Black Film Archives wants to reflect the diversity in black films and that is why she also is partial to independent filmmakers like Julie Dash and Charles Burnett.\n"We prioritize age films from the 1920s through 1930s. We have a collection policy that focuses on age, value and diasporic independent filmmakers," she said. "We are interested in filmmakers who may not be household names but have an important message to give about the everyday life in the African-American world."\nThe collection contains film shorts dating back to 1894, films such as "Birth of Nation," made in 1915, and several movies by Oscar Micheaux, the first black director. The collection also includes modern films.\n"We try to select films that generate discussions, like "Monster's Ball" and "Training Day," because of their content, and both lead actors have won academy awards," McCluskey said.\nThough it is called the Black Film Center Archives and most of the films are black films, McCluskey has extended the collection to include Africans in the Diaspora. McCluskey insists that everyone has a story and that the story of apartheid in South Africa is waiting to be told on film.\n"When you get out into the world, you have to step back, and there is a whole different existence and experience outside of America," she said, "and you get to see a different kind of film."\n-- Contact arts editor Patrice \nWorthy at pworthy@indiana.edu.