Uploaded February 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
"The Archive of Absence: Speculative Film History and Early African American Cinema"
University of Chicago Humanities Day
October 15, 2016
Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies
While African Americans produced films starting around 1909, no prints or fragments survive prior to 1920. This cinematic absence—a lost decade—is a great challenge for Black visual historiography, but also offers an opportunity for a more flexible and imaginative reconstruction of Black filmmaking practices, something that a number of contemporary Black artists have taken advantage of. This talk considers how a speculative archive can be mobilized not only to give form to what’s absent but also to create the visual material anew.
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
"The Archive of Absence: Speculative Film History and Early African American Cinema"
University of Chicago Humanities Day
October 15, 2016
Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies
While African Americans produced films starting around 1909, no prints or fragments survive prior to 1920. This cinematic absence—a lost decade—is a great challenge for Black visual historiography, but also offers an opportunity for a more flexible and imaginative reconstruction of Black filmmaking practices, something that a number of contemporary Black artists have taken advantage of. This talk considers how a speculative archive can be mobilized not only to give form to what’s absent but also to create the visual material anew.
If you experience any technical difficulties with this video or would like to make an accessibility-related request, please send a message to humanities@uchicago.edu.
