Black Film could supplement the efforts of Black Theater by filming such plays and making the tapes available to black groups around the country. Bourne himself mentioned just such a project Friday night. He has created a Black Film production company called Chamba (Swahili for "images-of-the-eye"), in part to act as a clearing house for Black Films.
YET, BLACK film-making, if it is to be successful in its own right, must consider the filming of black drama as a point of departure, not as an end in itself. Filming black drama robs drama (as an art form) of most of its impact and, more importantly, limits the cinematic technique to the conventions of the stage. The result is a marginal product containing most of the vices--and few of the virtues--of each.
But Black Film, indeed the entire black cultural movement faces a crucial problem: financing. At present, as Daniel Watts, editor of the Liberator has said, the black cultural revolution is financed almost wholly by white philanthropy. The implications of that fact go deeper than its obvious irony.
As the Movement continues to become more nationalistic, relations between black cultural groups and their white supporters will undoubtedly become increasingly tenuous. Such was made evident Friday night.
The audience was racially-mixed, almost equally so. Most of the whites were obviously patrons of the Center. It was, to a large extent, their money which had made the program possible. The reaction of the blacks in the audience, however, ranged from a self-conscious acknowledgement to cold hostility. The tension was noticeable from the outset.
The white patrons had not expected to see the kind of films that were presented. Many were dismayed by the first film "Riot Control." They were shocked that such weapons were being offered to and bought by police departments for use in the cities. The knowledge made for a certain discomfort for the whites.
The tension became almost tangible when the film "Huey" was shown. While the blacks in the audience erupted in applause at least six different times in response to statements made by the speakers in the film, the whites were noticeably silent and fidgety. As the main speakers in the film were Eldridge Cleaver, Stokeley Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown, the source of the applause--and the sentiment implicit in it--was not difficult to discover.
Thus the black cultural revolution is rapidly approaching a crisis. Inexorably becoming more nationalistic, it is almost certain to alienate the white support it is dependent upon. Black artists want to turn to the black community for their full support, but this would necessarily entail a reduction in the movement's momentum. The black community is struggling on too many fronts to concentrate all of its resources in the development of a black cultural consciousness (which, no matter how desirable, is not an immediate prospect).
The ambitions of the Black Film Festival were clearly beyond the reach of the films themselves. Black Film, except as an extension of Black Theater, does not exist; film-making costs being prohibitive, a new genre of black films with any meaningful dimensions presently remains beyond the grasp of most black artists. The more foreboding problem, however, is that in the coming years the black community must find new ways to underwrite and encourage its own cultural movement--even though this will result in a temporary setback in its momentum. Unless the black community can find new ways to bring substantive support to this nascent yet vitally important movement, it will remain without any meaningful roots in the black community. But more compelling, it will atrophy like so many other black endeavors left to the mercy of white philanthropy.