In this interview, filmed by the Criterion Collection in 2019, film scholar Mia Mask discusses blackface and the 'Bojangles of Harlem' number in George Stevens's 'Swing Time' (1936).
A man leaves his quiet life in the country to become a comic entertainer in the Big City. His journey is a Surreal celebration of the descent into a Hell of narcissistic self-destruction. In a string of events ranging from antisocial transgression to racist provocation to fantastic flights of absurdity, our protagonist loses grasp of his humanity and bit by bit slips into complete animal degradation. A comedy.
Our Colonial Hangover analyzes the debate surrounding the racist component of the Dutch Black Pete character. Although the debate always heats up around the time of the Saint Nicholas celebrations every December, it reached an unprecedented level of ferocity in 2013.
Unlike anything else you will see in this year or any other, 'The Decline of the West' is a groundbreaking social allegory that challenges its audience to explore the effects of contemporary conditioning; of the stereotypes, and counter-stereotypes surrounding race and ethnicity. By employing a unique blend of absurdist humor and dry, dark comedy, both the insularity and the inertia of progressive society are put on trial and hanged in this bold film that goes places few have ever gone. The film maintains its extended, detailed allegory, in which the physical layout of Manhattan comes to life as its symbols of Progress slowly turn it into a comic liberal dystopia. Anything that "isn't allowed" is used to confront the audience with hypocrisy. Make-up plays a crucial role throughout the film, as a hinge that simultaneously showcases characters and the existential reality of the players behind them.
Returning to the same medical school where they were test subjects years before, two twisted serial killers use brutal sex acts to kill off a group of med students.
A group of self-absorbed actors set out to make the most expensive war film ever. After ballooning costs force the studio to cancel the movie, the frustrated director refuses to stop shooting, leading his cast into the jungles of Southeast Asia, where they encounter real bad guys.
TV producer Pierre Delacroix becomes frustrated when network brass reject his sitcom idea. Hoping to get fired, Delacroix pitches the worst idea he can think of: a 21st century minstrel show. The network not only airs it, but it becomes a smash hit.
Documentary about WWII propaganda cartoons.
This documentary presents clips from black films from 1929 through 1957.
A mysterious door in the basement of the Hercules house leads to the Sixth Dimension by way of a gigantic set of intestine. When Frenchy slips through the door, King Fausto falls in love with her. The jealous Queen Doris takes Frenchy prisoner, and it is up to the Hercules family and friend Squeezit Henderson to rescue her.
This sprawling, surrealist comedy serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in modern Britain.
Jun Aisaka seduces one woman after another. His victims were flirtatious married woman Noriko, student Keiko, widow Mitsuko and dancer Rumi. As a result, he ends up in prison, but after escaping with another prisoner, he continues his criminal adventures with a partner. It is clear that this will not end well. Moreover, a couple of detectives are already on the trail of the criminals.
As the era of silent films finds itself at a close, four down-and-out silent film actors and musicians struggle to find work. Fate leads them to a former star of the silent era as she struggles to escape her reputation as a wild and evil vamp of the silver screen and longs to be just thought of as an honest and decent woman. They join forces, and for a short time have a decent amount of success singing and dancing at clubs and bars. But the public has an insatiable taste for foreign black jazz bands, and they will stop at nothing to become a success.
Blackie helps the police rescue hostage from an escaped maniac on a killing spree.
Blackie is implicated in a murder when he accidently sells a phony Charles Dickens first edition at an auction.
Show business twin sisters Rosemary and Susie, one serious and the other a scatterbrain, join the WAVES and both fall in love with crooner Johnny Cabot.
After marrying a dour and disinterested lord for status, a young woman falls in love with a stage actor while her best friend from boarding school enters an affair with her husband.
A ladybird is being chased by a black-faced spider.
Lovely Linda Mason has crooner Jim Hardy head over heels, but suave stepper Ted Hanover wants her for his new dance partner after fickle Lila Dixon gives him the brush. Jim's supper club, Holiday Inn, is the setting for the chase by Hanover and his manager.
A newlywed tries to deal with her troubled stepchild.