385:– films that were made with an all-black cast, featuring black people and black lifestyle, for a black audience, and shown to segregated African-American viewers. The history of race films began with Foster in 1910 and the comedic shorts produced by the Foster Photoplay Company. "These independent productions provided black viewers with images of African-American experience that were conspicuously absent from Hollywood films, including black romance, urban migration, social upheaval, racial violence, alcoholism and color prejudice within the black community". The genres range from comedies and western shows, to dramas and horror flicks. These race films were samong the most successful independent films due to their appeal to the African-American community. They were entertaining and provided an atmosphere entirely produced and featured by African Americans. The Foster Photoplay Company helped to introduce the idea of race films that enabled African Americans to depict their own image in the way they wanted. "Race films by maverick African-American directors such as Oscar Micheaux and
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363:, a young male who is lazy and always lounging around; and Uncle Tom, a docile and loved family member who works on the plantation. Early minstrelsy involved a white man painted with a blackface, but as time progressed and blacks became a part of the film world, blacks started to impersonate themselves with blackface. Minstrelsy remains a controversial issue; some see it as a racist, while others see it as tradition. It is a form of entertainment prevalent for more than one hundred years, and still exists in world culture today. Films such as
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During the 1920s, he moved to Los
Angeles to produce musical shorts of black entertainers for Pathe Studios, and then tried to establish a second incarnation of his film production company. However, around this same time, silent films were beginning to be overshadowed by the introduction of sound in the movie industry, and Foster's second shot at the Foster Photoplay Company went out of business before it even produced its first film.
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serving the waiter all the delicacies of the season. Mr. Husband proceeds to get his revolver, which he uses carelessly, running the unwelcome visitor back to his home. Then the waiter gets his revolver and returns the compliment… no one is hurt… and all ends happily." The movie was one of the first to represent blacks in a positive manner. It has also been said to be one of the first films to showcase a chase sequence.
373:(2000), about a black television executive who decides to make a minstrel show and is appalled by its success, still convey the same stereotypes that Foster was trying to convey nearly one hundred years earlier. Foster tried to break down these stereotypes. Entering an industry that had never had much positive African-American influence before, he ignited a spark in the African-American community for decades to come.
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Foster
Photoplay Company helped set up the tradition of black comedies and also established Foster's place in the film industry. The short films he produced and directed showcased all-black casts, with a positive look on the black culture and the African-American community as a whole, with a view to correcting the negative images prevalent in Hollywood. After
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films. Nonetheless, a few decades after Foster's heyday, major motion picture corporations started to feature blacks on film. While these films were nothing like those of the independently run film corporations such as Foster's, whose focus was primarily on uplifting the black image, they represented
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started producing race films. By the 1920s, more than thirty film production companies had been set up to produce films about blacks and their lives. The
Lincoln Motion Picture Company was known for making melodramatic films that always portrayed a black hero who prevailed and raised the image of his
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states that the film "dealt with a young wife, who thinking her husband had gone out on 'his run,' invited a fashionably dressed chap, who was a waiter at one of the colored cafes on State Street, to dine. However, the husband did not go out, and, upon returning home found wifey sitting at the table
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was still being used to represent blacks in film. Blackface involved white actors covering their faces completely with a black substance-like make-up. The actors drew on huge, pretentious red lips to make the face even more over the top. This technique emphasized the racial stereotypes that existed
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The movie industry was still fairly new to the media world and offered potential for all sorts of people to get involved. William Foster took hold of this growing industry and quickly made his mark in it. He established the Foster
Photoplay Company in 1910 and its films portrayed African Americans
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In 1910 he founded the Foster
Photoplay Company, which is credited as the first African-American independent film company. Foster stated that the film industry "is the Negro businessman's only international chance to make money and put his race right with the world." His goal was not only business
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Once the Foster
Photoplay Company went under after 1913, even with all its success, Foster relocated. At one point he even sent reels of his films overseas to the men fighting in World War I, so they could see what he was trying to do back home in the States to help the fight for racial equality.
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where a character might first slip, get his head stuck in a barrel, and then be spanked by another Black person wielding a wooden plank". Slapstick comedy, in which the humor derived from characters making a complete fool of themselves, was a comedic genre typical at the time of silent films. The
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in 1910. Foster had a vision for the
African-American community to portray themselves as they wanted to be seen, not as someone else depicted them. He was influenced by the black theater community and wanted to break the racial stereotyping of blacks in film. He was an actor and writer under the
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was made by Bob Cole. It was the first musical in New York written, performed and directed by blacks, and it played on the stereotypes of minstrel theatre. This film was one of the first that showed that
African Americans too could produce entertaining films about blacks, but ones that did not
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published in 1913, in which he "sketches out the public disclosure on the representation of blacks in white-produced films, a disclosure that would define the terms of the debate for the rest of the century". In addition to being a writer, Foster was a press agent for vaudeville stars such as
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and was most prominent starting in the mid-19th century. Minstrel shows showcased blackface actors at the expense of the
African-American community. The shows made fun of blacks and impersonated them by making them look like buffoons and imbeciles, using stereotypical characters such as the
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success but also to show that
African Americans could improve their image and standing all over the world. From the start Foster intended to leave his mark on the film industry and make an impact on the culture of his time and the culture of the future. In the words of film critic
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to get African-American film stars to play in his short films. More black production companies started in Chicago prior to the coming of sound than in any other city. In 1914, Foster went on a tour to the south to promote his three films released in 1913:
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degrade them altogether. These films, along with those of Foster years later, showed that African Americans were starting to fight back against harmful racial stereotypes. The NAACP began to get involved in the 1910s by criticizing films such as
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and Spike Lee,” said Jacqueline Stewart, Professor in English, Cinema and Media studies, and African and African-American studies. This filmmaking and inspiration all of which started from William Foster and his few silent, short race flicks.
252:, who would sing in front of the audiences while the film reels were changed between the shorts. Foster's company produced films from 1910 to 1913, but eventually folded, due to distribution problems. In 1915, the
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Foster influenced many African Americans to break into the realm of film, and after his company diminished many others followed in his direction. Within a few years George Johnson opened the
149:, it became the nation's "most influential Black weekly newspaper." Foster periodically wrote for other newspapers as well, still under the penname Juli Jones, including an article for the
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was Foster's only melodrama. He worked to produce comedies that would appeal to a wide range of viewers, but his use of an all-black cast, director, producer and crew was significant.
323:. Films such as these were stopped being produced abruptly and the comedic and degrading depiction of African Americans became dominant in the white film industry. In 1898, the film
86:(1884 – 15 April 1940), was a pioneering African-American film producer who was an influential figure in the Black film industry in the early 20th century, along with others such as
168:, which at the time was a well known vaudeville house. With these connections, he had his foot in the door of the theater industry years before he started his own film company.
280:; produced in 1912, and Foster's most financially successful movie. The movie premiered in Chicago at the States and Grand Theater and was an instant success.
113:, released in 1912, is credited as being the world's first film with an entirely black cast and director. The film is also credited with being the first black
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the expansion of African-American influence in the industry that "race films" such as those produced by Foster pioneered.
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The 50 Most Influential Black Films: A Celebration of African American Talent, Determination, and Creativity
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came into being, building on Foster's groundwork to produce various films including
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Nsenga Burton, "Celebrating 100 Years of Black Cinema", The Root, February 3, 2010.
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culture and people. Films of this nature would decades later come to be known as
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Four films were produced by the Foster Photoplay Company, the most notable being
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figure – a dark-skinned, large female who watched over the white children –
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had recently been established in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott. By the
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and also worked as a booking agent and business manager for Chicago's
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parade. Foster's company produced four films that were silent shorts.
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in 1884. He started his career as a sports writer for the
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Black Lenses, Black Voices: African American Film Now
737:"Black Film – Past, Present, and future", merc80.com
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Fire and Desire: Mixed-Race Movies in the Silent Era
533:. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 95.
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732:"Early Black Film History", ACinemaApart.com.
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512:"The Railroad Porter"
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339:The Birth of a Nation
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746:Categories
478:References
465:The Butler
452:The Barber
399:Julie Dash
383:race films
377:Race films
370:Bamboozled
333:The Nigger
301:The Butler
235:The Butler
105:vaudeville
101:Juli Jones
68:Occupation
365:Spike Lee
352:blackface
268:in 1917.
125:Biography
675:Rhines,
190:Keystone
182:Defender
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96:Chicago
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447:(1912)
415:Legacy
238:, and
361:Sambo
357:mammy
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