Reviving and Reviewing the "Race Film"

A Film Series copresented by the Wolf Humanities Center and the Penn Cinema and Media Studies Program. Program in collaboration with the Lightbox Film Center at International House Philadelphia.


This series revisits so-called “race films”: works of independent African American cinema produced from the 1910s to the 1940s. The afterlives of these films are manifest in their recurring religious themes, the vexed politics of their preservation and restoration, and their creative influence on later filmmakers.


Posters for Race Film Series

  • January 31, 2018 - 7:00pm

    Lightbox Film Center, International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut Street

    The Blood of Jesus

  • February 7, 2018 - 7:00pm

    Lightbox Film Center, International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut Street

    Body and Soul

  • February 14, 2018 - 7:00pm

    Lightbox Film Center, International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut Street

    Borderline

  • February 21, 2018 - 7:00pm

    Lightbox Film Center, International House Philadelphia, 3701 Chestnut Street

    The Watermelon Woman


Thanks to our Film Series Curators!

IGGY CORTEZ is a PhD Candidate in the History of Art and the Cinema and Media Studies Program. He is currently completing his dissertation entitled Night on Earth: the Nocturnal Sensorium in World Cinema. 

DR. ALEXANDER KAUFFMAN is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His research addresses the intersections of modern art, film, and exhibition.

ELENI PALIS is a PhD candidate in English and Cinema and Media Studies. Her dissertation focuses on the reappropriation of classical Hollywood film fragments in contemporary American cinema.