While the early images of African Americans in film have been attributed to Thomas Edison and D.W. Griffith, cinema by and for African Americans has its own long history. While often responding to the representation of blacks in White-directed films such as Thomas Porter's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903) and D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), African American production companies also made films that addressed concerns that were most relevant to their audience: uplift, ambition, and migration. The earliest production companies date back to 1910 and the Chicago-based Foster Photoplay Company, established by William Foster. The Foster Photoplay Company and many other companies to follow, including the L.A.-based Lincoln Motion Picture Company (est. 1916), produced films that came to be known as race films, films that were made with an all-Black cast, featured Black subject matter, and which were geared toward a Black audience. Often, but not always, the producers and technical personnel were also African Americans.

Due to the economic demands of filmmaking even during the early silent period, many race film companies were temporary, folding after one film and sometimes even before a film was ever made. The longest lasting of the early companies were George and Noble Johnson's Lincoln Motion Picture Company and the Micheaux Film and Book Company, established in 1918 by Oscar Micheaux, whose career included stints as a Pullman Porter, a homesteader in South Dakota, and as a novelist before he became a filmmaker. Micheaux's company made films that deviated from the messages of uplift often associated with the Black bourgeoisie who were often backing the films. Micheaux's films were often controversial because they explored taboo territory such as lynching (Within Our Gates, 1920), the KKK (The Symbol of the Conquered, 1921), and the hypocrisy of some Black store-front preachers (Body and Soul, 1924). These films stood in contrast to other race films such as the Colored Players Film

Corporation's Scar of Shame (1927), which warned against the evils of the city and supported moral uplift, middle-class ambition, and good works from a pronounced middle-class point of view. As background, it must be noted that race films often reflected the concerns of an urban, mostly northern, Black bourgeoisie concerned about the large influx of rural Southern migrants flooding the industrial centers of the North between WWI and WWII. For many race film producers, the cinema was first and foremost a tool for educating the masses.

With the transition to sound in 1927, race film production dropped off dramatically because many production companies were undercapitalized and therefore could not afford sound technology. This was also the case with many of the theaters which exhibited race films. Sound technology was too expensive and theater owners catering to an African American audience often could not compete with those venues that had already converted to sound. Additionally, with the first sound film released by Hollywood, Warner Brothers' The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927), racist representations continued and became more sophisticated, particularly in the use of Black-face. But what The Jazz Singer also suggests is the vogue for African American popular culture, particularly music and dance, that was spearheaded by the Harlem Renaissance and subsequently appeared in early Hollywood sound films. Initially, this was seen in the rise in production of "soundies," short films made to showcase entertainers who, like Bessie Smith, often made their debuts in shorts such as St. Louis Blues (Dudley Murphy, 1929).

During Hollywood's golden age, a period spanning the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, tension rose between race films and studio productions, as roles for African American performers in the latter were often demeaning but better paying and therefore preferable to the former. This tension can be seen in the experience of Hattie McDaniel, who made a career of playing domestic, mammy figures in Hollywood productions, most famously as Mammy in Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) rather than take roles in independent Black productions. However, during these years, some Hollywood studios began employing more Black performers in an attempt to appease its Black critics. Between 1929 and 1954, the industry was to produce a number of all-Black musicals, known as Black-cast musicals. These films, the most famous of which -- Hallelujah (King Vidor, 1929), The Green Pastures (William Keighley and Marc Connelly, 1936), Cabin in the Sky (Vincente Minnelli, 1943), and Stormy Weather (Andrew Stone, 1943) -- were made to capitalize on the appeal of the musical genre and to showcase performers such as Rex Ingram, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, and Bill \"Bojangles\" Robinson, who were extremely talented and willing to work for less than scale. The films also addressed the socio-political environment of the time -- a racially segregated nation which was built on the tenets of democracy and yet in which Jim Crow (segregation) laws were more the norm than the exception. In this context, Black-cast musicals allowed both Black and White audiences to enjoy African American performances, but because the audiences were often segregated and the films dealt with segregated stories, they were also reflections of a larger American mythos of "separate but equal."

During the early sound years, race film productions continued on a decreased scale, with many production companies being forced to seek out White support (or "angels"). Oscar Micheaux, for example, continued making films only with the help of outside financiers. Elsewhere, race film productions moved away from the more explicit messages of the silent uplift films and shifted into entertainment films, often adapting the generic conventions of the Hollywood western and gangster film. The westerns and gangster films offer two interesting examples of the collaboration between African American and White personnel. For example, African American nightclub singer Herbert Jeffries teamed up with a White producer and director, Alfred Sack and Richard Kahn respectively, in order to make a series of westerns between 1937 and 1939, starring Jeffries as cowboy Bob Blake. The films, Two Gun Man from Harlem (1938), The Bronze Buckaroo (1938), and Harlem Rides the Range (1939) -- all directed by Richard Kahn -- featured other talent like {$Spencer Williams, Jr. (another race filmmaker), {$Clarence Brooks">Spencer Williams, Jr.\">Harlem Rides the Range (1939) -- all directed by Richard Kahn -- featured other talent like {$Spencer Williams, Jr. (another race filmmaker), {$Clarence Brooks, Mantan Moreland, and Flournoy E. Miller, who were known both from the stage and from Hollywood productions. In order to compete with the Hollywood musicals, the films also included musical performances, often showcasing the talents of Jeffries and his back-up band, The Four Tones. According to Jeffries, the films were intended to provide young African American children with positive role models.

The gangster films offer another interesting example of an African American genre film. Starring Ralph Cooper and produced by Cooper and George Randol, films such as Dark Manhattan (Harry Fraser, 1937), and Midnight Shadow (George Randol, 1939) were gangster narratives in the vein of Scarface (Howard Hawks, 1932), but which also offered a rare glimpse into the streets and homes of Harlem, at that time still considered to be the "Negro capital of the world."

The production of Black-cast musicals tapered off as the U.S. entered WWII. In the face of African American political protest, headed by the Hollywood chapter of the NAACP, Hollywood studios were forced to integrate by hiring African Americans as talent and technical personnel. The pressure was to affect the content of the last few Black-cast musicals, especially Stormy Weather (Andrew Stone, 1943), which not only acknowledged African American participation in WWII but also African American involvement in WWI. After the war, Black-cast musical productions ceased except for the release of Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger) in 1954. Significantly, the film that marked the end of all-Black films made by Hollywood was released the same year as Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decision which ruled the practice of segregation to be unconstitutional. Race film productions also disappeared with the increase in opportunities in Hollywood. Only a few producers would make films in the '40s, with the most notable release being Miracle in Harlem (Jack Kemp, 1948). Micheaux continued making films, with little success, before passing away in the early '50s.

Three significant factors play a role in African American cinema of the immediate post-war years. First, the political pressure placed on Hollywood by the NAACP resulted in the gradual inclusion of African American talent and subject matter in mainstream releases. Second, the Paramount Anti-trust Decrees of 1948 resulted in the forced divestiture by the studios of their exhibition sites (theaters), the immediate result of which was to reduce the guaranteed profits that studios had enjoyed for decades. The more long-range effect of this decision was the reduction of Hollywood's power, as independent producers began to flourish in an environment of increased exhibition potential. The rise of the independents enabled a more "liberal" form of filmmaking, as small producers made films bucking the more conservative conventions of Hollywood. The golden age of Hollywood cinema was further dissolved by a series of court cases in the 1950s that eventually resulted in the replacement of the Production Code with a ratings system that suggested viewing guidelines rather than proscribing content. Additionally, the dismantling of the Production Code resulted in the increase in sexual and violent content, as well as opening the doors to miscegenation themes.

As a result of this more liberal post-war environment, American films began to address the nation's social inequities more directly, in what has subsequently been called "problem pictures" and "message movies." The Jackie Robinson Story (Alfred E. Green, 1951), starring Jackie Robinson, suggests the beginnings of a more "integrationist" focus in Hollywood filmmaking. But it is Sidney Poitier's first film, No Way Out (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1950) which perhaps best defines the structure of message movies, as well as defining Poitier's screen persona for decades to come. In No Way Out, Poitier plays a doctor on the staff at a large, urban hospital who has to deal with racism when a White patient accuses him of malpractice in the death of another (White) patient. Poitier overcomes prejudice and proves himself innocent, along the way proving his qualifications as a doctor. This would be the plot of many message movies -- an African American character is placed in some isolated, often all-White situation where he is forced to prove himself. Other message movies include Edge of the City (Martin Ritt, 1957), In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer,1967), and in each of them, Poitier plays an upstanding citizen.

By the 1960s, "problem picture" productions diminished as Hollywood and independent producers moved on to other areas of interest. From this time until the 1970s, Hollywood would be only occasionally involved in any Black-focused films, such as prestige projects such as the adaptations of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1961), again starring Poitier, and Gordon Parks' The Learning Tree (1969). There were, however, Black-focused films being made in the very independent and documentary areas of filmmaking. For example, both Shirley Clarke's The Cool World (1963) and Portrait of Jason (1967) examine African Americans in New York City's Harlem section, with the former a documentary-like fictional story of a 15-year-old gang member and the latter a documentary of a Black male prostitute. Documentary filmmaker Michael Roemer made his feature fiction debut with Nothing but a Man (1964), an all-Black film starring Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, shot in Alabama and dealing with the effects of Jim Crow on an African American family. And John Cassavettes released Shadows (1960), an early film that explores the theme of miscegenation by focusing on one fictional family living in Harlem.

It wasn't until the 1960s that African American directors started working in Hollywood for the first time. For example, the late 1960s brought Melvin Van Peebles to Hollywood after working in France (where he shot and released Story of a Three-Day Pass in 1967, the film that would subsequently bring him back to Hollywood via the San Francisco film festival). Once in Hollywood, Van Peebles, like Gordon Parks, Sr., began making socially-themed films like The Watermelon Man (1970) before moving on to independent production and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), the film that changed the face of African American filmmaking. Sweetback focuses on the title character, a hustler who works in a Watts brothel. Having been set up for a murder that he didn't commit, Sweetback escapes and spends the entire film on the run being supported by various facets of the African American and outlaw (Hell's Angels) communities. While the explicit sex and violence earned the film an X-rating, even in the more permissive post-Production Code environment, it was Sweetback's focus on and validation of an outlaw trickster figure, a prominent character in African American folklore, and the film's suggestion that this figure was supported in his escape from the cops that caught the audience's (African American and some White) attention.

Sweetback's appeal must be viewed in the context of its production and release. Prior to Sweetback, the conventional Black male role in film was an integrationist figure who symbolized, like Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, assimilation into middle class, white norms. Often, these figures were super men, who were outstanding doctors, lawyers, police, or scientists. But by the time Sweetback appeared in theaters, the U.S. had witnessed the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, the result of which had been a wave of highly publicized and televised urban rebellions, such as the one that rocked Watts in 1965. Additionally, the integrationist political agenda of the Civil Rights Movement was being replaced by the more active, more separatist creed of the Black Panthers and the Black Power Movement.

Sweetback's conventions, while controversial, were novel and emancipatory enough to draw crowds and to subsequently make a $10 million profit for a production that cost $500,000 (figures vary according to the source). While the more controversial aspects of the film might have been taboo for the filmmaking industry, its profits were tempting, and it was not long before Hollywood adapted and exploited the conventions to its own ends. Thus, while Sweetback is not considered to be a blaxploitation film, it is the film that inspired Hollywood to quickly produce a group of films that mimicked its conventions in order to turn a fast profit. These films, known as blaxploitation films, often featured a strong African American male lead, a city (Los Angeles, Harlem, Oakland) setting, funky costumes, and an underworld milieu peopled by drug dealers, pimps, and prostitutes, all set to music of musicians such as Curtis Mayfield. Perhaps the most well-known of the group are Gordon Parks, Sr.'s Shaft (1971) and Gordon Parks, Jr.'s Superfly (1972). Soon, however, the genre devolved into sequels and low-budget quickies. Additionally, it began to incorporate the conventions of other genres, such as the horror film, with Blacula (William Crain, 1973), and the martial arts film within the "Cleopatra Jones" series. Films starring characters such as Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown, and Coffy also indicate that blaxploitation was not limited to male leads, but quickly translated for female leads.

At the same time that Hollywood was capitalizing on the blaxploitation film, there was a group of African American and African graduate student filmmakers working under the auspices of UCLA. Known as the "L.A. Rebellion" or the "L.A. School of Filmmakers," this group of independent filmmakers took an anti-Hollywood, Pan-African (global) approach to filmmaking by making films that addressed the socio-economic realities faced by millions of impoverished and disenfranchised African Americans living in America's inner city ghettos. The filmmakers, such as Haile Gerima, Charles Burnett, Larry Clark, Zeinabu irene Davis, and Julie Dash, sought to identify more closely with the independence and post-colonial struggles being fought by people in sub-Saharan Africa. A survey of their films includes Bush Mama (Gerima, 1976), Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977), Bless Their Little Hearts (Billy Woodbury, 1984), and Illusions (Dash, 1983). These filmmakers continue to make films in the independent sector, often, like Gerima, choosing independent distribution and exhibition sites (film festivals and museums, for example). Some of the filmmakers' latest films include Sankofa (Gerima, 1993), Night John (Burnett, 1996), and Daughters of the Dust (Dash, 1991).

By the mid- to late '70s, Hollywood's investment in film with African American subject matter waned as mainstream industrial focus was turned toward the production of multi-million dollar blockbusters, following the model of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and George Lucas' Star Wars (1977). In this production environment, Hollywood was unwilling to commit large amounts of cash toward an African American blockbuster, choosing instead to make films which occasionally showcased the talent of individual African American performer, usually a comedian like Richard Pryor (Silver Streak, 1976; The Toy, 1982) or Eddie Murphy (48 Hrs., 1982; Trading Places, 1983; Beverly Hills Cop, 1984). In fact, Hollywood even tried to resurrect the black-cast musical with a big budget, musical remake of The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz (Sidney Lumet, 1978), starring Diana Ross, which was a critical and box office failure.

African American cinema stalled -- except for the independent features being produced by the Los Angeles School of Filmmakers and independent documentary producers -- until the '80s, when a young film school graduate would hit the festival scene with a low-budget, black and white feature entitled She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 1986). Initially, critics considered Spike Lee to be part of an emerging young generation of independent filmmakers, like Jim Jarmusch and Susan Seidelman, film school graduates making low-budget, unconventional films. Lee, however, was different from this group in that he was specifically focused on African American subject matter set in a particular context, Brooklyn, New York. Unlike blaxploitation or race films, which were often set in Harlem, Lee's film was responsible for introducing the African American sections of Brooklyn to the world. Lee is famous for his outspoken views on filmmaking, politics in general, and race politics in particular.

He is even more famous for his marketing skills, inspired by Oscar Micheaux and Melvin Van Peebles, who both maintained complete control over their products and, in Van Peebles case, marketed tie-ins to go along with the films. Lee has also been one of the most prolific young contemporary filmmakers, Black or White, working today. Noting the low number of follow-up filmmaking efforts by first-time African American directors, Lee vowed to make as many films as he could, and he has managed to produce and direct a film, through his Forty Acres and a Mule Production Company, almost every year since the release of She's Gotta Have It. Lee's body of work includes: School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Mo' Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), Get on the Bus (1996), He Got Game (1998), and Summer of Sam (1999). Lee has also ventured into documentary filmmaking with Four Little Girls (1997), a feature-length documentary examining the bombing of a church and the subsequent murder of four girls in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.

While Lee's more controversial films, like Do the Right Thing, seemed to define African American filmmaking of the late '80s, there was also a group of young filmmakers working at the same time who often received less press. Most notably, they were working in comedies. For example, Robert Townsend's Hollywood Shuffle (1987) was a low-budget satire of Hollywood's practice of limiting African American roles to pimps, prostitutes, and domestics. Keenan Ivory Wayans, best known for his work on the television show In Living Color, released I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), a send-up of the conventions of the blaxploitation film. Charles Lane released a semi-silent comedy, Sidewalk Stories (1989). And Reginald Hudlin made House Party (1990), the first in a series of teen comedies set in a Black, middle-class environment. All of these films share a self-consciousness about the history of African American comedy and African American representation.

The success of these filmmakers during the late '80s, especially the fact that their films were made for very little money and returned a high profit, began to be noticed by Hollywood. As a result, there was a dramatic increase in the release of African American films in the early '90s. Certainly the model of this is John Singleton, whose Boyz N the Hood (1991) not only made vast returns on a very low budget, but which is also responsible for setting the conventions of a certain type of African American film that lasted until the mid-'90s, and still exists today. Referred to as New Jack Cinema or 'hood films, Singleton's Boyz, along with Mario Van Peebles' (Melvin's son) New Jack City (1991), Matty Rich's Straight out of Brooklyn (1991), Ernest Dickerson's Juice (1991), and Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes' Menace II Society (1993) all share certain common characteristics: they're all coming-of-age stories focusing on young men, they're set in an inner city setting (L.A., New York), and they're all set in a contemporary time frame. Additionally, the films utilize the conventions of rap music, most notably on their soundtracks and in the practice of casting rap performers such as Ice-T, Ice Cube, and Tupac Shakur. Like blaxploitation, the genre soon devolved into low-budget variations on the conventions, however there were also parodies made that sent up the genre in hilarious ways: Paris Barclay's Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (1995) and Tamra Davis' CB4 (1993), the latter a lampoon of gangsta rap as well as film. Finally there were two notable attempts to make films dealing with young, urban women: Leslie Harris' Just Another Girl on the IRT (1992) and F. Gary Gray's Set It Off (1996). While the former film is a very low budget independent feature which received little press and little distribution, the latter film, which faithfully translates the conventions from the male films, down to casting rapper Queen Latifah, received much more critical attention.

Unlike blaxploitation, a short-lived genre that did not allow its African American personnel much advancement, the directors associated with 'hood films continue making movies, even though the genre disappeared by the mid-'90s. Most directors branched out into other genres, especially John Singleton, whose Rosewood (1997), a fact-based historical story of the racially-motivated destruction of an all-Black town in Florida in the 1920s, indicates an overall shift in focus to historical narratives that was introduced by Julie Dash's independent release, Daughters of the Dust in 1991. This has culminated in the release of films such as Eve's Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997), Amistad (Steven Speilberg, 1998), and Beloved (Jonathan Demme, 1998), all of which focus on certain historical (fictional) moments in American and African American history (the latter two, by White directors).

There has also been a rise in the middle-class melodrama and the middle-class comedy, perhaps as a reaction to the earlier 'hood films and the desire of the African American audience to see a diversity of images on the screen. Additionally, these films have introduced a number of new, young filmmakers. Most notable here are films such as Soul Food (George Tillman, Jr., 1997) and love jones (Theodore Witcher, 1997), which were the first two films set in a contemporary time frame to concentrate on youth culture while breaking away from the inner city genre. More recent variations on this theme include comedies/dramas of the sexes, such as Waiting to Exhale (Forest Whitaker, 1995), The Wood (Rick Famuyiwa, 1999), The Best Man (Malcolm D. Lee, 1999), and Love and Basketball (Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2000), all of which have narratives concerned with the relationships between men and women.

At the beginning of a new millennium, African American cinema is healthier than it has been for most of its history. There is a diversity of product being released both by the mainstream and the independent sector. Additionally, there has been a move away from a focus on reacting to or responding to the legacy of negative stereotypes that still persist in some Hollywood films today (see The Green Mile for an example of an updated Tom figure). Instead, filmmakers like Spike Lee and Julie Dash are creating their own characters and cinematic conventions, often drawing on African American popular culture (especially music) and African American folklore and traditions.