Film is one of the most influential means of communication and a powerful medium of propaganda. Race and representation is central to the study of the black film actor, since the major studios continue to reflect and reinforce the stereotyps of our times. The depiction of blacks in Hollywood movies reinforce many of the misconceptions of the white majority rather than objective reality, limiting black actors to stereotypical roles. The movie "Soul Food" proved to be the inspiration for African-Americans
knowledge and have a language to deal with it visually, it’s the time to start dealing with some of the more playful things. We’ve accepted privilege, we’re conscious of all these major issues that the generation before us laid down. — Rashid Johnson Sweet Sweet Runner, a 2010 short video by Rashid Johnson begins with the image of a middle-aged, bespectacled black man. The viewer is given momentary flashes, accompanied by the sound of sirens, that quickly defines what he is wearing (a fresh red jacket and
stereotypical depiction of Black people in American Cinema, as it took The Farm Story, performed by a small troop of Canadian actors, to create a Canadian theatre industry. To be more specific, it took the release of Melvin Van Peebles, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, in 1971, to change the tradition view of Black people in American film. “Porter’s tom was the first in a long line of socially acceptable Good Negro characters. Always as toms are chased, harassed, hounded, flogged, enslaved, and insulted
past. Families stopped going to films on a weekly basis because they had the much smaller and more convenient box at home. This prompted Hollywood to take on a more interesting approach to producing movies. With the introduction of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in 1971, an independently produced film about a male prostitute trying to get away from the white police force who accused him of a crime he didn’t commit.
History “American film was born from white depictions of blacks” Rogin (1996) Rogin (1996) argues that American films became popular from popular images at the time of caucasian people painting an image of African Americans using the well known "Blackface". "Maafa 21" is a film Directed by Mark Crutcher released in 2009; this film looks into how African Americans history shortly after slavery and how they struggled with labels and categorised with different types of insulting names. This documentary