“Sisters In Cinema” reviewed by Julia W. Rath

*** Recommended “Sisters in Cinema” (2003) is a documentary video, produced, directed, and written by Yvonne Welbon, that traces the history of movies made by African American women. Currently being distributed online as a video stream on OTV (Open Television), the documentary explains how these women have traditionally been marginalized in both the Hollywood studio system as well as within the indie market. It is fascinating to listen to Welbon’s interviews with a good number of these filmmakers and learn something about the struggles they faced to get their movies in front of their intended audiences. The work incorporates a lot of excellent research about the history of minorities in cinema that a general audience may know little, if anything, about. Although the underlying material is very good, the documentary could have been constructed much better. It needs to be more entertaining and less academic. The audience needs to learn more about what motivated these talented women of color to make the movies they did; it is not sufficient to learn simply that they made them. And we need to know which films have had the greatest impact in defining this uniquely female African American perspective.

Welbon should have devoted more time to the specifics of the films she has gathered and show us their value to the African American community and the public at-large, above and beyond presenting us with a few (excellent) snippets. Rather than including so many different films, it would have been better had she picked out the movies with the most telling stories or those received best by their audiences or those with directors whom a general audience may already be familiar with (e.g., Maya Angelou and her life story Why the Caged Bird Sings). Likewise, the featured films could have been the best in class (however defined), the most representative of a specific genre or time period, or the most unusual or perceptive.

After choosing a set of films to focus on, Welbon should have bolstered them with plot summaries to serve as the anchor for organizing her work into segments under various subheadings that could help the audience understand why these films are important. A larger social context could have served as the basis for several basic themes (for example, the intersection of race and social class; crime and inner-city females; the black experience at the college or university, or some other such category). It is only after doing this type of compilation that hearing the women talk about their films in their own voices becomes salient. These on-camera interviews can help us discover why they felt that that a film imparting a particular message absolutely had to be made, despite all sorts of obstacles. We can also learn how their approach to the subject matter might have been very different from that of an African American man—or a Hollywood producer.

This leads to a larger question: What exactly demonstrates quality in African American moviemaking? Welbon defines this as how the authentic the black experience is being portrayed. But what exactly is that experience, and how does a general audience come to know what is or is not authentic? Since the black community is not a monolith, what is the crucial identity or set of identities that these various films would have us to understand? “Sisters in Cinema” ought to flesh out in greater detail the different approaches that each of the filmmakers has used to depict a slice of black or female America. How do the characters in each of the films deal with the world or try to make sense of it? And do they do so in response to prejudice, discrimination, or marginalization, or some other set of factors?

That brings up the issue of emphasis. To my mind, a bit too much screen time is devoted to how hard each of these talented women of color worked to achieve their goals. Of course, we understand that it was (and still is) an uphill battle for most, much of it due to racial or sexual discrimination and some of it having to do with how major Hollywood studios, rightly or wrongly, understand profitability. We learn how difficult it was for these directors to find the necessary funding to create or complete their projects. This is an essential part of the story, and Welbon needs to segment it into one part of the documentary and deal with it as a whole, rather than constantly jump back to it. The bottom line is that this shouldn’t take away from the dominant theme, namely, the importance of the distinct perspective of African American women in the making of movies.

Finally, Welbon describes how her idol, the black Caribbean director Euzhan Palcy, depicted stories akin to what Welbon’s grandmother would tell. She explains how watching Palcy’s movies helped launch her own interest in film and fuel her desire to interview African American woman directors as part of her dissertation research at Northwestern University. Though interesting, Weldon’s on-screen autobiography takes time away from other aspects of the documentary that would have made the narrative richer. She is at her best when she is less obtrusive as a character and less heavy-handed as the narrator. While some narration is needed for describing the history of black cinema (e.g., the Golden Age of black film during the Great Migration) or in providing a frame of reference for early films created by black women (e.g., Zora Neile Hurston’s anthropological research on Southern life in the 1920s), a lot of the verbiage stating how important the woman directors are is rarely needed, as the significance of their accomplishments ought to stand on their own.

Towards the end of the video, Shari Frilot, the programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, says, “If you look at literature, it used to be a book by Hemingway. Now we have Toni Morrison and Alice Walker redefining the American novel and making our literature.” Similarly, “Sisters in Cinema” should have more clearly emphasized which African American women are currently instrumental in redefining the field. Doing this would also cut down on the number of interviewees which Welbon has afforded screen time to, and this would have provided better focus. The documentary needs to reveal to us not just who the contemporary directors are—and where they came from historically as a group—but also which of their films have made a greater contribution to furthering African American expression today and paving the way for the next generation of minority filmmakers.

Currently the featured presentation for Women’s History Month, “Sisters in Cinema” is produced by Our Film Works and is being shown online by OTV (Open Television). OTV is a not-for-profit media platform for “intersectional television”, showcasing alternative ways to develop, produce, and exhibit art and video.

For additional information about OTV, “Sisters in Cinema”, and other offerings, please go to their website: https://www.weareo.tv/.

You can become a member of OTV for $4.99/month or $39.99/year to take advantage of their rich catalogue of online content, or investigate their free trial offer. Membership fees and donations to the organization help support Chicago artists by creating a forum for their content and by producing and distributing an indie series available to the public. Please visit https://www.weareo.tv/ to find out more.