More than five years ago, as Rhea Combs and Doris Berger were in the planning stages of research for an exhibit on early Black cinema that would open at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences planned museum, they got word of a new discovery that would come to define the exhibit.
Archivists at USC and the University of Chicago went through boxes of silent film prints acquired from a collector in Louisiana and found a 30-second reel of two Black vaudeville performers, Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown, dancing and kissing. The reel, titled “Something Good — Negro Kiss,” was dated back to 1898, making it the earliest known kiss between Black performers put to film.
Combs and Berger knew as soon as they saw it that it was the perfect piece to open “Regeneration,” an exhibit that is now running at the Academy Museum through July 16. To them, it embodies...
Archivists at USC and the University of Chicago went through boxes of silent film prints acquired from a collector in Louisiana and found a 30-second reel of two Black vaudeville performers, Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown, dancing and kissing. The reel, titled “Something Good — Negro Kiss,” was dated back to 1898, making it the earliest known kiss between Black performers put to film.
Combs and Berger knew as soon as they saw it that it was the perfect piece to open “Regeneration,” an exhibit that is now running at the Academy Museum through July 16. To them, it embodies...
- 2/3/2023
- by Jeremy Fuster
- The Wrap
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is celebrating 73 years of Black film artistry with the new exhibit titled Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.
Curated by the Academy Museum’s Doris Berger and Rhea Combs of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the first-of-its-kind exhibition features seven galleries exploring Black representation in film, from portraits of icons like Ruby Dee and Nina Mae McKinney to home videos of the Nicholas Brothers and Cab Calloway.
“It’s really exciting for us to be able to help expand the conversation around American cinema, essentially, by bringing forward these important contributions by Black filmmakers as well as performers and other artisans and technicians,” Combs tells Variety.
Since 2017, Berger and Combs have been acquiring a vast collection of costumes, scripts, drawings and other historical materials for “Regeneration” by digging through multiple archives at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and even traveling to Berlin and Paris.
Curated by the Academy Museum’s Doris Berger and Rhea Combs of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the first-of-its-kind exhibition features seven galleries exploring Black representation in film, from portraits of icons like Ruby Dee and Nina Mae McKinney to home videos of the Nicholas Brothers and Cab Calloway.
“It’s really exciting for us to be able to help expand the conversation around American cinema, essentially, by bringing forward these important contributions by Black filmmakers as well as performers and other artisans and technicians,” Combs tells Variety.
Since 2017, Berger and Combs have been acquiring a vast collection of costumes, scripts, drawings and other historical materials for “Regeneration” by digging through multiple archives at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and even traveling to Berlin and Paris.
- 8/19/2022
- by Michaela Zee
- Variety Film + TV
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Wednesday detailed how its upcoming exhibit “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” will explore Black filmmakers from Oscar Micheaux to Melvin Van Peebles.
The Museum shared details of the exhibit, which will open on Aug. 21 and run through April 9, 2023 in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery. It is the second major temporary exhibit at the Academy Museum, after the current installation devoted to the work of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
In a press release, the Academy Museum described the exhibition this way:
“The exhibition explores the achievements and challenges of both independent production and the studio system, from cinema’s infancy in the 1890s through the height of the civil rights movement. ‘Regeneration’ features rarely seen excerpts of films restored by the Academy Film Archive, as well as other narrative films and documentaries; newsreels and home movies; photographs; scripts; drawings; costumes; equipment; posters; and historical materials,...
The Museum shared details of the exhibit, which will open on Aug. 21 and run through April 9, 2023 in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery. It is the second major temporary exhibit at the Academy Museum, after the current installation devoted to the work of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki.
In a press release, the Academy Museum described the exhibition this way:
“The exhibition explores the achievements and challenges of both independent production and the studio system, from cinema’s infancy in the 1890s through the height of the civil rights movement. ‘Regeneration’ features rarely seen excerpts of films restored by the Academy Film Archive, as well as other narrative films and documentaries; newsreels and home movies; photographs; scripts; drawings; costumes; equipment; posters; and historical materials,...
- 5/4/2022
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
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