As more Black films & Black filmmakers converge at Sundance more than ever in a new initiative via Ava Duvernay’s African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement’s efforts for greater focus on the writing, producing, directing & distribution of Black Films, I couldn’t help but to look at the Sundance line up & wonder what exactly is considered a Black film? Two films in particular led me to ask what is a Black film ?  Is a Black film  based on the criteria that it is about Black people, a film produced and/or directed by Black people or all of the above?

“Family Portrait In Black & White” is a film about the life of bi-racial children in the Ukraine adopted by a Ukrainian woman directed by a Russian director (Julia Ivanova); “The Black Power Mixtape” is based on footage shot by Swedish journalists following Black Panthers,  Kwame Toure  AKA Stokely Carmichael’s SNCC & Angela Davis, co-produced by Danny Glover & directed by Goran Olsson who is also Swedish & directed “Am I Black Enough For You“. “The Black Power Mixtape” is all the buzz amongst the Black film world & categorically put in the genre of Black film, but I can’t say I’ve seen the same treatment of  ”Family Portrait In Black & White”,  so I must ask what are Black filmmakers & the film world at large defining as Black films & do we even need the category when world known filmmakers like Spike Lee can direct Jodie Foster, Clive Owen & Denzel Washington in  a film like “Inside Man” without it being labeled as neither a Black or White film, just a drama?

I have always thought about the fact that we fight over the idea of constantly being labeled & having our creativity categorized in specific boxes, yet we continue to not look at the bigger picture of what we ourselves as Black people adopt, allow & promote amongst ourselves. This is all food for thought because I witnessed this boxing of Black creativity  in the fashion industry where it eventually became a way to separate & deny opportunity for Black fashion designers & fashion labels. The category of “Urban” was created to represent the street style, cosmopolitan, hip-hop culture inspired creations brought to the fashion industry by designers like Karl Kani, Fubu, Enyce, Mecca, Sir Benni Miles and rappers come designers like Fat Joe, P. Diddy & Jay Z.  While White/Jewish designers & manufacturers like Tommy Hilfiger & Marc Ecko capitalized on the global cross over popularity of the new “urban” market, they quickly began to distance themselves from the “urban” label which now became code word for “Black”  and therefore limited the retailers that would carry designs specifically made by & for Black people without ever having to own up to the discrimination aspect of the labeling outside of saying that they just don’t carry “Urban” labels much like saying one does not carry juniors, plus size, young designer or contemporary, even though urban inspired street style designs could be  found in all categories of fashion from contemporary to luxury. A Karl Kani leather clutch with logos all over it could never be found in the same retail store that carried Louise Vuitton or even a Tommy Hilfiger leather clutch with logos all over it just because it was urban & at a particular price point limited by its urban labeling.

While Marc Ecko & Tommy Hilfiger could get floor space in major retailers like Macy’s, Bloomingdales & Nordstrom’s etc.,  many Black designers could not get this same floor space because these retailers did not carry so called “urban lines” in many or all of their locations after the heyday of Karl Kani as the king of urban fashion. While Tommy Hilfiger saw the limitations of urban as a market & label &  started receiving backlash from people like Spike Lee in his film Bamboozled that spoofed him as just another White guy making his fortune of the creativity of Black people, Tommy Hilfiger reinvented himself by moving into the direction of “all American luxury designer” along with Marck Ecko who moved into skateboard, extreme sports & his own all American hip-hop inspired culture with publications & other ventures to add to his empire. Many designers like Karl Kani & Sir Benni Miles ended up losing the rights to their own names & brands as their partners licensed it out to European designers, manufactures & retailers who could still appreciate the cachet of “urban” representing the cosmopolitan street style inspired by hip-hop culture that was created by Black American designers. Now Sir Benni Miles is still going strong in European countries like Germany where they still utilize his image & Brooklyn street credibility with a Wikipedia page fully in German & Karl Kani as a label without its original designer is sold all over Europe, while Karl Kani the man & original designer could never truly reinvent himself  back to his heyday as the coveted brand with longevity through the test of time as Tommy Hilfiger has done with several reinventions & restructuring of his  brand.

“In 1989, Kani set up a store in Los Angeles. A year later, he hooked up with the black-owned clothing company Cross Colours and launched his creations nationally. Throughout the early 1990s, Karl Kani set the tone for much of urban fashion, especially in the music industry. Rocking Kani clothing became both a symbol of success and a fashion statement. When Cross Colours faded in 1995, Kani didn’t falter. He continued to make moves but one move really helped to define his company. “We’ve had several dynamic situations in my company [but] I think one company that stands out in my mind is Skechers,” he says. “They had a licensing arrangement with me and they wanted to go public and I didn’t want to do it. It got to be a very big court battle situation and I had to really stand my ground. As a black man who started something, I didn’t want to sell my soul per se to the stock market at the time because I wasn’t really controlling the entity. When I decided to make a move like that, it really made me grow up as a man, to stand out there on my own and make a lot of moves. It changed a lot of things in my business and it made me understand that business is warfare and you’ve got to be prepared for battle at any moment to really stand for what you want….”READ MORE

“Tommy Hilfiger should be considered the poster child for marketing innovations. He was the first traditional clothing designer to capitalize on the Hip Hop world. From 1990 to 1993 Tommy Hilfiger was only bringing in $25 million a year. But that all changed in 1994 after a performance by Hilfiger-clad Snoop Doggy Dog performed on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. After the performance Tommy’s sales quickly jumped to $67 million. Since then, Hilfiger’s sales have continued to claim nearly $900 million. In 2002 Tommy Hilfiger reported sales of up to $1.9 billion. The company has remained around the billion-dollar mark. In 2006 Apax Partners, a global private equity investment group bought Tommy Hilfiger, Corp. for a reported $1.6 billion along with the agreement that Hilfiger would stay on to run the company.  Cross Colors was founded by Carl Jones in the early ’90s. Cross Colors. Upon its arrival on the market, the company was so hot, that they had major problems filling orders. With $130 million in pre-paid orders, they could only ship $89 million. The company grew at an uncontrollable rate. In its first year of business, Cross Colors made $15 million, and by 1992 it made $89 million. These figures are staggering and show the kind of market share that the new, urban market was able to capture easily. Designer Karl Kani started his career with Cross Colors (Threads 4 Life), but left the company in 1994 to start his own label. In its first year the Karl Kani label had $22 million in sales, ranking him No. 38 on the Black Enterprise Industrial/Service 100 list. In the following year, Kani had $59 million in sales-a 37 percent increase over the previous year. The 1995 numbers earned him a leap from No. 38 to No. 25 on the Black Enterprise Industrial/Service 100 list. After such an impressive first two years, the line lost its market share, but Kani managed to reinvent himself and the company. Often called “the godfather of urban fashion,” in 2002, Kani returned with the introduction of “Life” a new clothing line that made $25 million in its first year. Achieving success where Hilfiger failed, Kani partnered directly with Hip Hop artists, rather than just having them wear his product….” Read More

It seems Eastern European nations like Germany, Russia & the borderline East/West nation Sweden have become the new mecca of  exporting global Black culture, whereas Western European nations like France once proclaimed to be the European mecca for global Black culture. Much of Black arts culture along with urban fashion labels of old have found new life in Europe with new designers adding their European hip-hop inspired street style to it with their original creators nowhere to be found. This seems to be the blueprint of Black creative demise, yet we constantly seem to fall in place to play that role be it in the music industry à la what was depicted in Cadillac Records, in art à la Basquiat, in fashion à la ”urban” being the new European cool with few to no Black faces attached, so called Black publications whose creative image is controlled by White people, or in film with countless examples in the past & present. As Black history month comes along again this year, I hope we really have this dialogue amongst ourselves  & take a look at our own complicity in our limitations & lack of opportunities. Perhaps we should pay special attention to what Morgan Freeman said about the need for a Black history month & the life we create & allow for ourselves as Black people globally because if we take the ride we will eventually pay the price.

We as Black people/global Africans somehow are always the creators that others ride our coattails of creativity to their profitability , while we are told & accept the idea that our personalized creativity can’t sell, it’s not profitable or it’s somehow not in demand on a global scale! We must stop believing the hype & figure out who & what we are & want to be to the global world where we have continuously been the purveyors of its popular culture.  If a White person can make a film about Black people & sell it worldwide without it being seen or called a Black film or without the fact that it being about Black people becoming a deterrent or limitation in selling globally, then hot dammit so CAN WE!

Black House Photo credit: Shadow and Act