The following is a press release written by the Black Film Center & Archive Team for the Black Film Center & Archive.
BFCA’s inaugural Emerging Scholars & Artists guest Dr. Danyelle Greene will deliver a lecture titled “Racial Aesthetics in One Night in Miami. . . (2020): Screening ‘Daring’ Conversation Through Fictionalized History.” Please join us Tuesday, November 19 at 4:00pm in the BFCA Phyllis Klotman Classroom. Refreshments provided.
The 2020 film adaptation of One Night in Miami… is a fictionalized narrative about real historical figures—Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Malcolm X—who meet at the Hampton House Motel in Miami, Florida in 1964. While the historic meeting itself is notable, Dr. Danyelle M. Greene (Florida Atlantic University) examines the discursively rooted and "daring" conversations on race, religion, self-determination, and liberation at the core of the fictionalized film. The film’s layered discourse embraces the polyphony of the characters’ voices while spotlighting the varying dynamics of racial aesthetics involved in defining and redefining blackness through Black American cinema.
The Black Film Center & Archive's Emerging Scholars & Artists Series supports newer faculty (tenure-track, visiting assistant professors, lecturers) whose research and practice centers on Black cinema and up-and-coming artists whose work focuses on Black life, culture, and identities. Invited participants travel to the BFCA to deliver a talk about their current research or creative project. The BFCA pays for the Scholars and Artists' travel, lodging, some meals, provides an honorarium, and during their visit, affords them one day to conduct research at the Center.
