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Posts published in “Movies”

DISH Network Launches Africa Box Office Channel For U.S. Audiences

By goodblacknews on January 2, 2013

Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock.com

Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock.com

Ever hear of Kate Henshaw-Nuttal? How about Genevieve Nnaji? You might soon. They are two of Nollywood’s top actresses. Nollywood (Nigeria’s film industry) is continuing to give Hollywood a run for its money… with help from moviegoers. The Nigerian film industry is now an $800-million industry, reports Forbes. And it’s becoming more global. In fact, even the Dish Network has recognized the power of Nollywood. It has just announced it will launch Africa Box Office (ABO), an Afro-Caribbean movie channel. ABO is broadcasts films exclusively from Nollywood, the prolific Nigerian film industry. It also airs films from other major African and Caribbean motion picture houses.
According to a press release, ABO is the largest Afro-Caribbean content aggregator for television in North America, broadcasting over 150 new movies per year, eight movies every day, and three premieres every week. It has a catalog of more than 1,500 African and Caribbean movies, leveraging the Afrotainment Family of Channels.

Peter Ramsey, First African American to Direct an Animated Film, Discusses His Career on CNN

By goodblacknews on January 1, 2013


In this day and age, when we see stories about “the first African American” to do something. Today is the start of 2013 and these “firsts” are still happening across geographies and industries.  One last one to cross off the list is “first African American to direct an animated film.” Peter Ramsey directed the DreamWorks film Rise of the Guardians, the blockbuster holiday movie that, over the course of its six-week release, has grossed more than $90 million. This week, it rounds out the top ten with $4.9 million, in a field packed with movies like The Hobbit, This Is 40, Django Unchained, and Les Mis.
rise-of-the-guardians1-pfRise of the Guardians, is about a group of Immortal Guardians, including a tough-as-nails Easter Bunny and tattooed Santa Claus, who must protect the Earth from an evil spirit. The film has been a great success overseas, and has helped Ramsey’s profile rise in the past few weeks. The 49-year-old never finished college, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, but takes the time to speak to schoolkids, to let them know that this is something they can work towards.
“I want them to know they can do it. You can start with a piece of paper and a pencil. There’s no limit to the kinds of stories they can draw,” he says.

Above, CNN talks with Ramsey about his rise in the animated film industry.

 
Read more at http://madamenoire.com/250126/peter-ramsey-first-african-american-to-direct-an-animated-film-discusses-his-career/#TPrtWvTKsrTkojxW.99

Henry Louis Gates Jr. Talks to Quentin Tarantino: A Podcast Special

By goodblacknews on December 27, 2012

HenryLouisGates

Hear The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., chat with the Django Unchained director about the n-word and a possible sequel.

A Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds trilogy? The historical accuracy of the n-word in 

Django? The unlikely connection between the slavery-themed film and The Birth of a Nation? How Django fits into Hollywood’s overplayed, often offensive white-savior stereotype? You name it, and The Root‘s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Quentin Tarantino — whose latest film, Django Unchained, a “postmodern slave-narrative Western,” as Gates describes it, opened on Christmas Day — likely covered it in this exhaustive interview.

QuentinTarantino

When asked why he wanted to combine a slave narrative with a Western, Tarantino said this:

It’s two separate stories I’ve always wanted to tell. One, I’ve always wanted to tell a Western story. Two, I’ve always wanted to re-create cinematically that world of the antebellum South, of America under slavery, and just what a different place it was — an unfathomable place. To create an environment and again, not just have a historical story play out — they did this and they did that, and they did this and they did that — but actually make it a genre story. Make it an exciting adventure.

Listen to the whole interview by clicking here.

Also, read it in three parts:

Tarantino Unchained Part 1: Django Trilogy?

Tarantino Unchained Part 2: On the N-Word.

Tarantino Unchained Part 3: White Saviors.

 

Seven African Americans Make Hollywood Reporter’s Women In Entertainment Top 100

By goodblacknews on December 23, 2012

Shonda Rhimes (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

The Hollywood Reporter released its Women in Entertainment Power 100 and seven black women made the ranks this year. Oprah, naturally, was the top-ranking African American, at number 18, as the CEO of the OWN network.

Debra Lee, chairman and CEO of BET Networks, was number 23, while Vanessa Morrison, president of Fox Animation Studios, came in at number 27. Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, and Scandal, has always made a point to bring a diverse cast of characters to the TV screen and was number 47 on the list.

Black British Actors Making Waves in Hollywood

By goodblacknews on December 15, 2012
Colin Salmon attends the Royal World Premiere of 'Skyfall' at the Royal Albert Hall on October 23, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Eamonn McCormack/Getty Images)
Colin Salmon attends the Royal World Premiere of ‘Skyfall’ at the Royal Albert Hall on October 23, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Eamonn McCormack/Getty Images)

Black British actors are taking Hollywood by storm. In recent years more and more have been cast in on-screen roles, not just in big budget U.S. films but also on American television.  In fact, nowadays it is highly likely a Brit will be found starring in a major Hollywood movie or hit TV series. Currently, U.S. television boasts several black British actors who are regular cast members in popular shows like Homeland and Game of Thrones.

“I love British actors,” says Brooks Jackson Colyar, a Los Angeles-based agent who represents actors and comedians. “I am fascinated they can take that accent and turn it into everyday American English,” she adds.  Black British actor David Oyelowo, 36, is a classic example. Born in the Oxford to Nigerian parents, Oyelowo was best known in the UK for playing an intelligence officer in the television drama series Spooks.

Born On This Day in 1912: Acclaimed Photographer & Director Gordon Parks

By goodblacknews on November 30, 2012
Gordon Parks
(Photo: BILL FOLEY /Landov) 
Gordon Parks was a master of many arts: photography, film making, music and fiction. But the world almost missed the opportunity to experience and enjoy his major contributions.   Born on Nov. 30, 1912, to a family in Fort Scott, Kansas, that already included 14 other children, Parks was declared stillborn when his doctor couldn’t detect a heartbeat. Thanks to another doctor who thought to immerse him in cold water, which got his heart beating, he survived.

Parks, who taught himself photography with a used camera he bought for $7.50, led a life filled with firsts and major milestones, including shooting for Vogue and becoming the first Black photographer at Life magazine, where for two decades he documented the civil rights movement, race relations and urban life in America. 

Documentary “The Forgotten Cowboys” Explores Lives and History of America’s Black Cowboys

By goodblacknews on November 21, 2012
Jason Griffin (center) is one of the stars of "The Forgotten Cowboys," a documentary film by John Ferguson and Gregg MacDonald which follows the lives of black cowboys in the U.S.Jason Griffin (center) is one of the stars of “The Forgotten Cowboys,” a documentary film by John Ferguson and Gregg MacDonald which follows the lives of black cowboys in the U.S.

(CNN) — Jason Griffin straps his right arm in bandages, preparing himself to grip the reins a wildly bucking bronco. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a rough beard, he steps into his cowboy boots, fits a Stetson hat and heads out to meet his mount in the rodeo arena.  Griffin is a four-time world champion bareback bucking horse rider — competing in a sport that began in the 19th century heyday of the Wild West.  With each victory — he has also won three all-round rodeo championships — the Texan raises awareness of a strong tradition which is rarely seen in the many novels, films and television series dedicated to the tales of the old West: The historic story of America’s black cowboys.

On cinema screens and paperback covers, the cowboys of old were heroic, hard-bitten and — almost always — white. In reality, the American West of the 1800s was traversed by an assortment of black, white, Mexican and Native American cattle hands. Contemporary records are rare but historians now estimate that up to one in four Texan cowboys was African American, while the number of Mexican cowboys was even greater.

John Ferguson and Gregg MacDonald’s documentary film — and multimedia project — “The Forgotten Cowboys” follows Griffin and other contemporary black cowboys as they gain a following competing at rodeos and go about their working lives.

Watch online: the video trailer for the documentary “The Forgotten Cowboys”

‘Boyz n the Hood’ Reimagined by Interpretive Dancer Kyle Abraham

By goodblacknews on November 14, 2012

Kyle Abraham.jpg

The thirty-five-year-old choreographer Kyle Abraham has come a long way in just a few years. In 2006, he established his company, Abraham.In.Motion, and since then has produced dances that have earned him awards and critical acclaim. In December, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre will première a work that it commissioned from him. For someone whose career has taken off in such a big way, though, he retains a strong connection to his Pittsburgh roots, and shows great integrity in his dance-making, both of which were evident in his newest work, “Pavement,” which Abraham presented recently at Harlem Stage.

Abraham, who is African-American, went to high school in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, a historically black neighborhood, and in several of his previous works he drew on his experiences there. For “Pavement,” he went back to 1991, to reimagine the film “Boyz n the Hood,” about gangs in South Central Los Angeles, which was released that summer. He used the film as a springboard for examining life in Pittsburgh’s African-American communities in the Hill District and East Liberty Homewood and reflecting on the state of the black American experience in the two decades since its release.

But Abraham’s conception was even more sweeping. He also wanted to look at the history that had preceded the strife represented in “Boyz n the Hood,” and found a pertinent source in “The Souls of Black Folk,” the 1903 book by W. E. B. Du Bois, whose essays became instrumental in African-Americans’ struggle for equality in the twentieth century. Du Bois’s text made no appearance in “Pavement,” but Abraham included a quote from it in the program, which hovered over the dance: “Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as a natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the ‘higher’ against the ‘lower’ races.” In the light of Du Bois’s words from more than a century ago, the realities as depicted in the film are sobering. From the perspective of 1991, when the ravages of H.I.V., crack addiction, and gang genocide were entrenched, not much seems to have gone right.

Tattoo Artist Imani K. Brown Promotes Creativity and Craft in the Body Art World

By goodblacknews on November 7, 2012
Imani Brown Tuskegee Airmen Tattoo

One of the oldest and most prevalent cultural practices across the globe, tattooing has become increasingly popular in the African-American community. Yet while this group has demonstrated a growing affinity for receiving tattoos, the number of licensed black artists practicing the profession is much smaller by comparison. Add gender to the mix, and the number dwindles even further.

“I want to believe there are more of us [women], but so far, there are very, very few,” African-American tattoo artist Imani K. Brown, 32, told theGrio. ”I know about two in Detroit. That’s it.”  Being a black tattoo professional has placed the artist in a strange caste. “People think we’re on the darker side of life,” said Brown, referring to misconceptions about her line of work.  ”That we’re all rockstars and worship the devil.”

Yet, Brown is a trained artist who hails from Washington D.C.’s Pinz-N-Needlez Tattoo, one of the few black-owned and operated shops in the country. To add further distinction, she is documented as only the second licensed black female tattoo artist in America. She recently learned of the first accredited black female artist, 66-year-old Jacci Gresham of New Orleans, upon watching the new documentary Color Outside The Lines, by black tattoo artist Miya Bailey and filmmaker Artemus Jenkins. Brown is also featured in the film.

Forest Whitaker Launches “Sharon Is Caring,” Teams Up With Indiegogo To Crowd Fund Films

By goodblacknews on November 7, 2012
Forest Whitaker AFI - P 2011
Forest Whitaker’s JuntoBox Films has greenlit production for romantic comedy Sharon Is Caring, while also announcing the shingle’s collaboration with crowd-funding platform Indiegogo.

Announcing the link-up at AFM on Nov. 5, the actor-turned-producer said the JuntoBox-Indiegogo partnership “represents another step toward using social collaboration and the elements of our digital world to empower the voices of independent filmmakers everywhere.”

As a result of the tie-up, entries on the website can now have the access to the production, mentorship and distribution services provided by Juntobox, a “collaborative” film studio chaired by Whitaker.

“Indiegogo’s roots were in film, so we’re excited to partner with JuntoBox to further extend our reach within the independent film community,” said Indiegogo co-founder and CEO Slava Rubin. “The JuntoBox Partner Page on Indiegogo will empower filmmakers to raise money for their films, tap into a global audience and bring more independent film projects to life.”

Founded in January 2008, the San Francisco-based portal aims at facilitating individuals to raise funds for their social or entrepreneurial projects from around the world.

Sharon Is Caring, revolving around two women avenging a man dating them at the same time and to be directed by New Yorker Wesley Mills, is JuntoBox’s fourth approved project this year. Aspiring filmmakers begin pitching the idea online, where members would vote on to pass judgment on whether they merit a launch.

article by Clarence Tsui via hollywoodreporter.com