"All Black Everything"—‘Left of Black’ Season 3 Premiere Promo

The 3rd season of Left of Black premieres September 17th, 2012. Join us on http://www.ustream.tv/leftofblack at 1:30pm, September 17th, 2012.

Seasons 1 and 2 of Left of Black are archived at http://leftofblack.tumblr.com & iTunes U

The Best of 'Left of Black" 2011

Left of Black, the weekly video webcast that I host in conjunction with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University, is now in it’s second season.  The show is on holiday hiatus until January 9^th, when we will broadcast a new episode featuring Princeton University Professor Eddie Glaude and UCLA Sociologist Mingon Moore. Until then, here’s a collection of some of our best episodes from 2011.

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Left of Black S1:E19

w/ Hank Willis Thomas

January 31, 2011

In this special episode of Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined by conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas. Thomas’ works include Winter in America (2008), Branded(2008), ReBranded (2008), Black is Beautiful (2009), Fair Warning (2010) and UnBranded (2010) and he is the author of Pitch Blackness (2008). Neal and Thomas engage in a wide ranging conversation about Black masculinity, urban violence, the export of Black popular culture and Michael Jackson as well as a walk-thru of Thomas’ Hope Exhibition at the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Left of Black S1:E23

w/Shana Tucker
February 21, 2011
 

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal welcomes independent artist and cellist Shana Tuckerinto the Left of Black studio at the John Hope Franklin Center.  Tucker and Neal discuss her new fan-financed CD SHiNE and a style of music that Tucker calls “Chamber Soul.”

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Left of Black Episode S1:E24

w/Pierre & Jamyla Bennu & Rebecca Walker

March 7, 2011

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by filmmaker and conceptual artist Pierre Bennu and his partner and natural beauty care producer Jamyla Bennu.  Later writer Rebecca Walker joins Neal, also via Skype, from her home in Hawaii.

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Left of Black S1:E28
w/ Rosa Clemente and 9th Wonder
March 21, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Rosa Clemente (via Skype), the 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential candidate in a conversation about the historic Green Party ticket in 2008, contemporary Black activism and Hip-Hop.  Later Neal is joined in-studio by Grammy Award winning producer, label head and educator 9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit).

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Left of Black S1:E31
w/ Karla FC Holloway
April 25, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke UniversityProfessor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by fellow Duke University Professor Karla FC Holloway, author the new book Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics (Duke University Press).  Neal and Holloway discuss medical racism, the Tuskegee experiments and the late Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X.

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Left of Black S1:E32 

w/ Aishah Shahidah Simmons & Zaheer Ali

May 2, 2011

Left of Blackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons in a discussion of sexual violence in Black communities, homophobia, and popular culture controversies surrounding Ashley Judd, Kobe Bryant and DJ Mister Cee.  Later Neal talks with historian Zaheer Ali, one of the lead researchers on the late Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Re-invention.

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Left of Black S2:E4 
w/ Julie Dash & Lizz Wright 
October 3, 2011 

Filmmaker Julie Dash joins host and Duke UniversityProfessor Mark Anthony Neal on Left of Black.  This year marks the 20^th Anniversary of the release of Dash’s ground-breaking film Daughters of the Dust which was the first feature by an African-American woman to gain national theatrical release.   The film draws on Dash’s South Carolina heritage and focuses on three generations of women with roots in the Sea Islands and Gullah culture. Dash discusses how she became a filmmaker and the challenges she faced along the way.  Dash also reveals her surprising view of filmmaker Tyler Perry. 

In the second segment, musical artist and vocalist Lizz Wrightjoins Neal. The Georgia born singer discusses how her family’s tradition in storytelling inspired her career as a vocalist.  Wright, whose music is difficult to place in one genre, talks about incorporating religion into her music as well.  Wright also identifies the musicians who influenced her and the inspiration her album artwork.  Finally Wright explains how she’s maintained control of her music.  Wright has released four full-length recordings, including the recent Fellowship. 

Left of Black S2:E6
w/ Dr. Kenneth Montague and Kellie Jones
October 17, 2011

Dr. Kenneth Montague, a Toronto-based dentist and the curator of Becoming: Photographs from the Wedge Collection, joins Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal at the Nasher Museum in Durham, Carolina. The Windsor, Ontario born Montague has collected contemporary art since the 1990s, and was influenced by African American culture from across the Detroit River. Neal and Montague discuss some of the featured artists in the collection including Jamel Shabazz, Carrie Mae Weems, Malick Sidibé, and James VanDerZee, and the importance of collecting Black Art.

Later in the episode, Neal is joined via Skype© by Columbia UniversityArt Historian Kellie Jones, author of the new book Eyeminded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art.   Neal and Jones discuss her famous parents, Hettie Jones and Amiri Baraka, and her work as curator of the new exhibit, Now Dig this! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

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Left of Black S2:E9
w/ Vijay Prashad and Leyla Farah
November 7, 2011

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Nealis joined via Skype© by Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College and author of the recent award winning book The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (The New Press, paperback 2008).  Neal and Prashad, discuss the impact of the #Occupy Movement and what role Left academics and intellectuals have to play in the movement.

Later Neal is joined by Leyla Farah, author of Black Gifted and Gay which profiles the lives and accomplishments of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community’s living icons—who  just happen to be of African descent.  Farah is a Founding Partner at Cause+Effect, a PR firm focused exclusively on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. 

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Left of Black S2:E13

“Acting White” in the “Post-Black” Era

w/ Professor Karolyn Tyson and Ytasha Womack 

December 5, 2011 

 

Left of Blackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in-studio by Professor Karolyn Tyson, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of Integration Interrupted: Tracking, Black Students, and Acting White After Brown(Oxford University Press).  Neal and Tyson discuss the prevalence of the “Acting White” myth as it relates to Black high school students and how the myth obscures the more insidious practice of  “Racialized Tracking” in Public Education.

Later Neal is joined via Skype© by Ytasha Womack, journalist and author of Post-Black: How a Generation is Redefining African American Identity (Lawrence Hill Books).  Neal and Womack discuss the concept of “Post-Black” and what impact it has had on identity formation among the so-called “Post-Black” generation. 

'Left of Black' S2:E4 w/ Julie Dash & Lizz Wright

Left of Black S2:E4

w/ Julie Dash & Lizz Wright

October 3, 2011

Filmmaker Julie Dash joins host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal on Left of Black.  This year marks the 20^th Anniversary of the release of Dash’s ground-breaking film Daughters of the Dust which was the first feature by an African-American woman to gain national theatrical release.   The film draws on Dash's South Carolina heritage and focuses on three generations of women with roots in the Sea Islands and Gullah culture. Dash discusses how she became a filmmaker and the challenges she faced along the way.  Dash also reveals her surprising view of filmmaker Tyler Perry. 

In the second segment, musical artist and vocalist Lizz Wright joins Neal.  The Georgia born singer discusses how her family’s tradition in storytelling inspired her career as a vocalist.  Wright, whose music is difficult to place in one genre, talks about incorporating religion into her music as well.  Wright also identifies the musicians who influenced her and the inspiration her album artwork.  Finally Wright explains how she’s maintained control of her music.  Wright has released four full-length recordings, including the recent Fellowship.  She performs at Duke University’s Reynolds Industries Theater on October 7^th.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for download @ iTunes U

Left of Black Celebrates Black Female Artists Julie Dash and Lizz Wright on Next Episode [October 3, 2011]

Left of Black Celebrates Black Female Artists Julie Dash and Lizz Wright on Next Episode [October 3, 2011]

Filmmaker Julie Dash joins host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal on Left of Black.  This year marks the 20^th Anniversary of the release of Dash’s ground-breaking film Daughters of the Dust which was the first feature by an African-American woman to gain national theatrical release.   The film draws on Dash's South Carolina heritage and focuses on three generations of women with roots in the Sea Islands and Gullah culture. Dash discusses how she became a filmmaker and the challenges she faced along the way.  Dash also reveals her surprising view of filmmaker Tyler Perry. 

In the second segment, musical artist and vocalist Lizz Wright joins Neal.  The Georgia born singer discusses how her family’s tradition in storytelling inspired her career as a vocalist.  Wright, whose music is difficult to place in one genre, talks about incorporating religion into her music as well.  Wright also identifies the musicians who influenced her and the inspiration for her album artwork.  Finally Wright explains how she’s maintained control of her music.  Wright has released four full-length recordings, including the recent Fellowship.  She performs at Duke University’s Reynolds Industries Theater on October 7^th.

Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on Duke's Ustream channel: ustream.tv/dukeuniversity. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive.  

Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.

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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack

Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackMan

Follow Lizz Wright on Twitter: @LizzWrightMusic

Follow Julie Dash on Twitter: @JulieDash

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"Subway Stories: Sax, Cantor, Riff" (dir. by Julie Dash)

HBO held a contest asking New Yorkers to submit interesting true stories that happened on the subways. The winning stories were then adapted for the film. "Sax, Cantor, Riff" was written and directed by Julie Dash, featuring Taral Hicks (singer), Kenny Garrett (saxaphone), Dan Rous (Cantor) and Sam Rockwell. Produced by Jonathan Demme and Rosie Perez.

Filmaker Julie Dash on WUNC's The State of Things

The State of Things with Frank Stasio

WUNC-FM

Daughters of the Dust

Filmmaker Julie Dash made history with her movie, “Daughters of the Dust.” In 1991, it became the first full-length feature by an African-American woman to receive a general theatrical release. The critically acclaimed movie tells the story of the Peazant family, a clan of Gullah Island dwellers who are divided by the decision to leave their isolated life and move to the mainland. “Daughters of the Dust” will be screened at The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University on Thursday as part of the new “Seeing Black” film series. Host Frank Stasio talks with Dash and with series co-curator Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell about their reflections of the film 20 years later.

Listen Here

Filmmaker Julie Dash to Speak at Duke on 20th Anniversary of 'Daughters of the Dust'

Durham, NC - On the 20th anniversary of its release, Julie Dash will discuss her film "Daughters of the Dust" following the film's screening at Duke University on Thursday, Sept. 8.

The film, which kicks off the Duke African and African American Studies department film series, will be shown at 6 p.m. at the Nasher Museum of Art.  A discussion with Dash and art history professor Richard Powell will follow the screening. The event is free and open to the public.

"With the spirited public conversations about films like 'Precious,' 'For Colored Girls' and, most recently, 'The Help,' it's clear that the moving image continues to be one of the critical sites of interests about the preservation and dissemination of images of black humanity," said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke and the event organizer. "With our film series, we are hoping to intervene in these conversations by highlighting the expansive range of films that reflect black experiences."

"Daughters of the Dust," released in 1991, was the first feature by an African-American woman to gain national theatrical release and was named to the National Film Registry, a collection of films deemed by the Library of Congress to be national treasures.

The film draws on Dash's South Carolina heritage and focuses on three generations of women with roots in the Sea Islands and Gullah culture. Set in 1902, "Daughters of the Dust" grapples with slavery's legacy, migration, sexual abuse and sexual freedom, and maintaining tradition amid modern pressures.

Dash's visit also will include screenings of her short film "Praise House," a collaboration with the founder and choreographer of Urban Bush Women.

The 2011-12 African and African American Studies film series, curated by Neal and history graduate student Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell, will continue in October with "Handsworth Songs" (1986), an experimental film documenting the 1985 racial unrest in Britain.

For more information, visit Duke's African and African American Studies website.

Daughters of The Help

Daughters of the Help

by Mark Anthony Neal | HuffPost BlackVoices

Twenty years ago filmmaker Julie Dash celebrated the release of her groundbreaking film Daughters of the Dust. The film, set off the South Carolina coast, chronicles the lives of a black family, led by family matriarch Nana Peazant, at the turn of the 20th Century. Shot by cinematographer Arthur Jafa the film offers a brilliant portrait of black life, between and betwixt the modernity that would radically transform it. The film also offers one of the most complex and sophisticated views of the lives of black women in the era. It is a measure of how forward thinking Dash's Daughters of the Dust was and how backward Hollywood remains 20 years later, that a film like The Help could be lauded as an intimate and authentic depiction of the lives of the Black women who worked as domestics. The tragedy is that far fewer people have seen, let alone, heard of Daughters of the Dust.

As I watched The Help -- with my soon 13-year-old daughter sitting next to me -- I couldn't help but think about the daughters of Daughters of the Dust and the daughters of The Help. In Daughters of the Dust, there wasn't a question as to whether these young women were facing progress, but rather whether that progress would be enveloped with the hard-earned integrity that helped their family survive the middle passage and enslavement. With The Help, I was left witnessing Minny Jackson (in a brilliant, Oscar deserving performance by Octavia Spencer) bequeathing to her barely teenage daughter, a life of servitude and labor exploitation. In one of the film's more insidious moments, The Help passes off Minny's daughter's future as the product of the demands of Minny's abusive (and invisible) husband and not the very visible system of Jim Crow that limited opportunities for such women and girls for more than a century.

Both my grandmother and my mother-in-law were domestics at one time or another during their lifetimes. My grandmother, now deceased, worked as a domestic for a time in the late 1960s for former New York Mets manager Davey Johnson, then a second baseman for the Baltimore Orioles. My mother-in-law worked as a domestic until her husband could acquire the kind of job that would allow her to stay at home and raise their children, the youngest of which is my wife. I imagine that both my grandmother and mother-in-law would readily admit that their experiences as domestics were far different than those experienced by black women in the deep south in places like Jackson, MS, where The Help is set.

Unlike Minny, my grandmother was able to raise daughters -- my mother and aunts -- who would not have to spend their lives working as domestics, but instead had careers as teachers, health-care workers and ministers. It was the same with my mother-in-law, whose two daughters both earned college degrees, in part because she could give her daughters the attention that they deserved, instead of the children of the families that she once worked for.

My own 13 year-old daughter, offered little comment after viewing The Help, sensing that her parents had critiques that she did not share. She is of a generation of young blacks for which multiculturalism is the default position; I imagine that the heroic white person, whether found in The Help or The Blindside (which she cites as her favorite film) offers comfort within that multi-cultural worldview, as Tea Partiers, Birthers and segregationists in the neighboring Wake County threaten to turn back the clock on her. In this regard, one of the biggest failings of The Help is that a teenage black daughter could watch the film and come away not fully understanding the sacrifices made by the black daughters that came before her; that black daughter that allows her to take comfort in the very heroic white figures that Hollywood continues to manufacture.

 

Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NewBlackMan