Early African-American Film Database, 1909–1930

Marika Cifor,Shanya Norman,Hanna Girma,Miriam Posner

doi:10.5334/johd.7

Marika Cifor, Shanya Norman + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.5334/johd.7

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Abstract

This dataset covers silent “race films”: films created before the year 1930 featuring African-Americans for primarily African-American audiences. The data was collected through research utilizing a wide variety of primary and secondary sources. It contains records on films, actors, production companies, and other key components of the early race film industry. The data is primarily stored on the research data repository site Zenodo and additionally within a relational database on Airtable. Reuse potential of the data includes pedagogical purposes, social network analysis and as a support for the extant study of silent era and race films. The data will also enable further research in film studies, African-American history, the history of film exhibition, and the digital humanities.

Highlights

The data contains the 303 silent race films we identified in our research, linked to 759 actors and other film personnel and 176 race film companies, each record bolstered with descriptive and archival information
After an extensive survey of primary and secondary literature on silent and race films, we settled on a definition of a race film as a film with African-American cast members, produced by an independent production company and discussed or advertised as a race film in the AfricanAmerican press
While we immediately discarded known blackface films, we recorded most of the films from our time period captured in the secondary literature on African-American film, those contained in Larry Richards’s African-American Films through 1959: A Comprehensive Filmography and Henry Sampson’s Blacks in Black and White [2]

Summary

Introduction

The data contains the 303 silent race films we identified in our research, linked to 759 actors and other film personnel and 176 race film companies, each record bolstered with descriptive and archival information. The data is contained within four linked spreadsheets: People, Film, Companies, and Sources. After an extensive survey of primary and secondary literature on silent and race films, we settled on a definition of a race film as a film with African-American cast members, produced by an independent production company and discussed or advertised as a race film in the AfricanAmerican press. As we refined our definition of race filmmaking, we considered each film individually, eliminating those films produced by mainstream production houses and those we had learned were blackface comedies designed for white audiences. For a full, annotated list of the archival and secondary sources we employed, please see http://dhbasecamp. humanities.ucla.edu/afamfilm/sources-further-reading/

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