Sen­sa­tion­al art­work from the first 100 years of black film posters

As part of the BFI’s major UK-wide Black Star sea­son the BFI South­bank is cur­rent­ly home to the Sep­a­rate Cin­e­ma Exhi­bi­tion, show­cas­ing orig­i­nal film posters loaned from the most exten­sive pri­vate hold­ings of African-Amer­i­can film mem­o­ra­bil­ia in the world, The Sep­a­rate Cin­e­ma Archive. Span­ning a cen­tu­ry of film art and tak­en from var­i­ous coun­tries around the world, these posters show the evo­lu­tion of movie pro­mo­tion over the years, but more per­ti­nent­ly they also reveal a great deal about how black­ness has been por­trayed, exploit­ed and indeed com­modi­tised, through­out the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. Here are 10 of our favourites to give you a flavour of this essen­tial exhibition.

Hal­lelu­jah marked a turn­ing point for African-Amer­i­cans in film. It was the sec­ond all-black cast film pro­duced by a major Hol­ly­wood stu­dio and the first sound film by white writer and direc­tor King Vidor. It focused dis­cus­sion about the impact of film images on the reli­gious life of black Amer­i­cans and on their polit­i­cal and social oppor­tu­ni­ties. Hal­lelu­jah demon­strat­ed the tal­ents of black per­form­ers and showed the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of sto­ries focused on black life. Yet, Hol­ly­wood was still decades away from cast­ing stu­dio films with African-Amer­i­can lead actors.

In a career span­ning almost 30 years, Oscar Micheaux became the most suc­cess­ful ear­ly black inde­pen­dent film pro­duc­er and the first black film auteur. A mile­stone in Amer­i­can film his­to­ry, The Exile was the first all-black-cast inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced ​“talkie”. It enjoyed a suc­cess­ful run in New York, but was cen­sored by the Penn­syl­va­nia Board of Cen­sors, which object­ed to a scene of Bap­tiste kiss­ing a white woman. Although the film gen­er­at­ed much con­tro­ver­sy, it gave hope to oth­er race film­mak­ers that black films could com­pete in the new mar­ket of sound movies.

Oscar Micheaux offered audi­ences a black per­spec­tive on the Chica­go gang­ster film genre (Lit­tle Cae­sar, Scar­face) as empha­sised in this poster. Oth­er mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als pri­ori­tised the music, with images of a band play­ing. Ethel Moses, billed as ​“the Black Jean Har­low,” was a vet­er­an Broad­way star (Black­birds, Show­boat and Keep Shuf­fling) and Micheaux’s lead­ing lady in both Temp­ta­tion and Under­world. Oscar Polk, her co-star, lat­er fea­tured as Scar­let O’Hara’s loy­al ser­vant Pork in Gone with the Wind.

On 21 July,1943, only three months after MGM released the ground­break­ing Cab­in in the Sky, 20^th Cen­tu­ry Fox pre­miered this, anoth­er all-black, all-star musi­cal that cel­e­brat­ed the best of African-Amer­i­can enter­tain­ment. Stormy Weath­er​’s revue style draws togeth­er the singing and danc­ing of a num­ber of lumi­nar­ies, includ­ing Cab Cal­loway, Fats Waller, singer Ada Brown, the Nicholas Broth­ers, pianist Doo­ley Wil­son, and dancer Kather­ine Dunham.

Inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced by David Susskind and Philip Rose and direct­ed by Daniel Petri (who replaced Lloyd Richards, the black direc­tor who had brought the play to Broad­way), A Raisin in the Sun intro­duced many white movie­go­ers to black fam­i­ly dra­ma. The film’s ensem­ble cast, which includ­ed Ruby Dee and Diana Sands, and its unerr­ing exact­ness in depict­ing the prob­lems and con­cerns of the ghet­toised black work­ing class made the film not just a com­pelling study but also a land­mark film.

Sid­ney Poiti­er plays Vir­gil Tibbs, a well-dressed black stranger who is picked up on sus­pi­cion of mur­der but turns out to be a homi­cide detec­tive who embar­rass­es the big­ot­ed white Sher­iff (Rod Steiger) with his shrewd inves­tiga­tive skills. The film was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­en Acad­e­my Awards and received five, includ­ing Best Pic­ture, Best Actor (Steiger), and Best Screen­play (Stir­ling Sil­liphant). Although Poiti­er did not receive a nom­i­na­tion, he reprised his role as Detec­tive Tibbs in two oth­er films, They Call Me MIS­TER Tibbs! and The Organization.

This crossover film, along with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), helped launch the 1970s explo­sion of the blax­ploita­tion genre. Direc­tor Gor­don Parks, Sr (the first black direc­tor to helm a Hol­ly­wood stu­dio film, The Learn­ing Tree) hired Richard Roundtree to play John Shaft, a black super­hero and rene­gade detec­tive. Made at a cost of $1.5 mil­lion, Shaft grossed over $12 mil­lion and saved MGM from finan­cial ruin. Isaac Hayes’ Acad­e­my Award win­ning sound­track, was in the charts for well over one year. Shaft’s appeal to con­tem­po­rary audi­ences result­ed in both sequels and imi­ta­tors, as well as black female super­woman movies like Foxy Brown.

Foxy Brown was the suc­cess­ful fol­low up to the high­ly prof­itable Coffy and was direc­tor Jack Hill’s fourth and final film with Pam Gri­er. It was released in the US in a dou­ble bill with Truck Turn­er, fea­tur­ing Isaac Hayes. Gri­er fea­tured in a series of Black­ploita­tion movies in the 1970s becom­ing iden­ti­fied as a gun car­ry­ing female cru­sad­er – a rep­u­ta­tion that Taran­ti­no part­ly paid homage to, cast­ing her in Jack­ie Brown. Renowned Motown hit writer Willie Hutch wrote the score.

In a depar­ture from his for­mu­la wise-guy char­ac­ter that ear­ly ​’80s audi­ences were accus­tomed to, Eddie Mur­phy stars in this mod­ern roman­tic fairy tale as twen­ty-one year old Prince Akeem, heir to the rich, fic­tion­al, African king­dom of Zamun­da. Direc­tor John Lan­dis had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Mur­phy on the high­ly suc­cess­ful Trad­ing Places. The fol­low­ing year CBS filmed a pilot for a spin off TV series but this did not take off. Fun fact: Com­ing to Amer­i­ca was Cuba Good­ing Jr.’s first film as ​‘Boy get­ting Haircut’.

Ear­ly Hol­ly­wood por­tray­als of African-Amer­i­cans in stereo­typ­i­cal roles are a source of anger and embar­rass­ment decades after those images dis­ap­peared from the screen. Direc­tor Spike Lee’s provoca­tive Bam­boo­zled revis­its those images. A satire of a 21^st-cen­tu­ry min­strel show, the movie par­o­dies blacks on tele­vi­sion and film today, and ques­tions just how much progress Hol­ly­wood has made.
The title of the film refers to a speech in which civ­il rights activist Mal­colm X states, in ref­er­ence to African Amer­i­cans, ​“You’ve been hood­winked. You’ve been had. You’ve been took. You’ve been led astray, led amok. You’ve been bamboozled.”

The Sep­a­rate Cin­e­ma Exhi­bi­tion runs until 2 Jan as part of BFI’s Black Star, with a tie-in cof­fee table book ​‘Sep­a­rate Cin­e­ma: The First 100 years of Black Poster Art’ avail­able now.