THE TEMPLE seems totally out of place there, its awesome gray presence looming over Seaver Street in the heart of Boston's black community. The temple Mishkan Tefila belongs to another era, an era when Roxbury was peopled by the Goldbergs and the Rosenthals--but Roxbury is no longer Jewish, and the awesome granite structure is no longer a temple. It serves a new constituency and a new purpose now: it is the National Center for Afro-American Artists. Last Friday in the auditorium of the Yeshiva, the National Afro-American Center presented its first Black Film Festival.

The physical plant of the Center makes for a gloomy atmosphere. One enters expecting the Center's rehabilitation to have progressed much further than it has, but the dull gray walls of the auditorium and the tarnished brass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling give notice that rehabilitation is still a long from completion.

The film festival was as depressing as its surroundings. In fact, the event's title was a misnomer--there were only three films, all of which were documentaries. None lasted more than fifteen minutes. Whether this particular event qualified as a film festival was not of major concern, however. Its purpose was to establish a precedent, a base on which an authentic black film festival can be founded. But whether that ambition can be realized is a matter of considerable doubt.

St. Clair Bourne, a producer of the National Educational Television program, Black Journal, screened and discussed the three films: "Huey;" "Riot Control;" and one entitled "Newsreel." Actually Bourne, who has a masters' degree from Columbia in TV-filmmaking, was more interested in the significance of the films than in the films themselves.

He stated that they represented the beginnings of a new film form, Black Film. Black Film is not merely filming done by black people. It is, according to Bourne, intrinsically different from "white" film, in tone, in rhythm, and in function.

Pressed to clarify this difference, Bourne's explanation was ambiguous. It goes without saying that Afro-American rhythm, "soul" rhythm, differs from "white" rhythm. Bourne's argument that just as soul rhythm can be heard in music, it can be applied to and seen in film was murky. He readily agreed that his thesis was vague, blaming it on the fact that the concept itself is a new one.

The function of Black Film was perfectly clear: to reflect the attitudes, aspirations, and problems of Afro-Americans, and to offer suggestions for the resolution of black problems. The validity of the other differences mentioned--tone, rhythm et al--is open to question.

THE SUBJECT of the film "Huey" is obvious. A documentary made for the Black Panther Party in Oakland this summer, it was not, and was not understood by the audience to be, an example of Black Film.

"Riot Control," a collage of ads from a police journal promoting riot control weaponry interspersed with still shots of the 1967 Newark revolt, was a warning that further explosions in the ghetto will be met with an escalation of brutal repression. Though effective in presenting its message, it could have been done by a white cameraman sensitive to the subject. The film's rhythm, its irregularity notwithstanding, was not the prototype of a new concept. Its impact upon the audience was electric; but the film hardly represented a new genre of cinematography.

"Newsreel," composed of a non-chronological series of shots having no immediate relationship to each other, was produced by an avant-garde film company of the same name. One scene depicted a memorial service for Malcom X at a Harlem school; the next, a panel discussion in Newark of Harold Cruse's The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual.

Again the rhythm differed from what is usually found in the 16 millimeter market. But that in itself does not mean that a white cameraman could not have filmed it (or that a white audience could not understand it).

On this basis any talk of Black Film might seem ridiculous. A case can be made for the concept, however. Bourne was working within certain restrictions. The films were documentary and impersonal. No person occupied the center stage, and no specific problem was set forth. Thus they failed to meet the definition that Bourne himself (and others) had advanced.

But if Black Film can be seen as an extension of Black Theater, then perhaps its conceptualization can be realized.

Black Theater is theater by, about and directed towards the black community. Black Theater is entertaining (and not simply because drama-in-black-face is the current vogue), and, more importantly, illuminating. As Peter Bailey writes in Newsweek (February 24), ". . . its raison d'etre is cultural nationalism." Its purpose is to further the growth and self-knowledge of the black audience. In today's theater there is more than ever, before a natural empathy between the black playwright and his black audience; there is no need for an exposition of "the problem," the presumption being that the audience, being black, shares certain basic assumptions with the playwright and the characters. He (the black playwright) is concerned with black people's relationships with each other, how they themselves perceive the assets and liabilities of the black experience in America.

Bailey mentions the Lonnie Elder play, "Ceremonies in Dark Old Men," performed by the Negro Ensemble Company in New York, as an example of Black Theater. The play explores the material and psychological problems of a black Harlem family. The characters are neither one-dimensional nor stereotyped. Elder develops them into full black human beings: they face and resolve some of the problems raised, leaving others for the audience to ponder.