tradition of whites determining the future for blacks. It's merely a question of whether white liberals will supplant the overt racists. Black cinema needs to become a community cinema with a new set of myths. Then it can aid self-determination. But the pressures against such a cinema are immense. The economic nature of the media, profit-oriented with large capital investment, may forbid it. Vested white interests will be against spreading a gospel which contradicts its own and threatens to destroy its economic base by raising the consciousness of not only black viewers, but white viewers too. A so-called revolutionary film like Sweetback met with the utter disdain of the white industry. Black cinema's fate is not sealed. It's too young. Its audience has not yet been trained to heel to black-washed stock forms and techniques of individually oriented white cinema. Determined men like Melvin Van Peebles prove a film can be distributed directly to black audiences, though using unconventional means (h silk-screened T-shirts and leafletted from corners). The opportunity remains to explore new techniques and styles of a black aesthetic. Besides language, dress, and music, the black cinema can reflect upon non-European interpersonal relationships, and non-European economic relationships. In defining black sexuality, having avoided the i hibitions of WASP society, it could forsake the pimp-prostitute romanticizing. As Bertolt Brecht raised the consciousness of his audience within a form designed for Everyman, black cinema can create a Three Penny Opera for the center city.