This is a guest post by Allyson Nadia Field, Associate Professor of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Chicago and Cara Caddoo, Associate Professor of Cinema & Media Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington.
While recent decades have seen a proliferation of films written, directed, and produced by African Americans, the legacy of these endeavors stretches back over a century. African American filmmaking began in the silent era where independent producers made movies, known as race films, for segregated audiences. Like the vast majority of silent era film productions, most race films of this period are lost. In fact, hardly any material survives that was shot by Black filmmakers prior to 1920.[1]