Expanding BlackFilmArchive.com

Celebrating Black Film Archive’s 1st Anniversary with Merch and the 1980s.

What does it mean to make Black film history accessible? A year ago, I launched BlackFilmArchive.com after spending significant time pondering this question. On its first anniversary, I am proud to reaffirm my commitment to the accrescent question by expanding Black Film Archive to include films from the 1980s and strengthen the platform’s focus on global Black cinema. 50+ movies — with more to come — have been added with this criteria in mind for you to explore right now. 

Black Film Archive, which Slate.com likens to being the definitive history of Black cinema, is an ever-evolving archive dedicated to celebrating the rich history of Black cinema’s past. Like cinema, the platform exists as a continuous, developing conversation in lock step with the destinations your needs and desires can take you.

Black Film Archive is: 

• a platform that converses among the intersectionalities of a global Black struggle, triumph, joy, pain, and overcoming with cultural context

• a place that chronicles the optimism and heartache in Black cinema as a new independent Black film movement emerged in the 1980s post Blaxploitation’s heyday

• a site that pushes the confines of voyeuristic gaze and representation by allowing users to bring their hearts, minds, and non-monolithic approaches to viewing cinema’s representation of Blackness across time.

The films collected on Black Film Archive have something significant to say about the Black experience across the globe. As I noted in my original Black Film Archive letter, the selections speak to diverse Black audiences; and/or have a Black star, writer, producer, or director. When considering Black Film Archive now offers a sorting distinction for global Black films, one can also reflect on the aesthetic, social, and cultural stakes for Black cinema. By formally expanding the inclusion of what Black Film Archive is, the movies on the site remain in deeper conversation with what Black cinema is and can be. 

The wide-ranging expressions of Blackness among the Archive’s new additions – from Robert Townsend’s searing 1987 exploration of the mistreatment of Black Americans in Hollywood to Safi Faye’s love letter to her village – positions us all to consider the ways Blackness can be constructed beyond the intrusive gaze of whiteness; the ways cinema has long been a tool for Black people to self-define Blackness; the way Black creators have soared with a dearth of opportunity; the way Black film bends all conventions, expectations, and resists categorization. 

The expansion of Black Film Archive to include the 1980s and focus on global Black cinema  is an ongoing project and just a start. What is forthcoming is guided by strengthening the community trust I’ve proudly maintained and fostered since the inception of the Archive. If last year’s focus was on exploring the feasibility of having these films collected together for the first time, this year, I set out to advance conversations and forge new possibilities for Black cinema.

If you’re looking for a place to start among the new films on Black Film Archive, my updated curator picks are here. If you have more questions about Black Film Archive’s future, check out the refreshed Q&As, if you’d like to submit a film for consideration, send a note to request@blackfilmarchive.com. 

Black Film Archive remains self-funded; if you’re looking for a way to sustain its future, I hand-drew merch to celebrate its anniversary. The limited edition shirts and poster are available to shop now. I also am refreshing the paid Substack subscription to include a text hotline to answer Black film questions, an ongoing merch discount, along with resuming paid Substack newsletters.

When it comes to Black Film Archive, my greatest hope is, as always, that the Archive can offer a different lens through which you understand Black cinematic history, where you can plant roots and tend to the abundance of our garden. I feel fortunate to provide some seeds of knowledge.

Thank you, all. Endlessly.