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In Film Blackness Michael Boyce Gillespie shifts the ways we think about black film, treating it not as a category, a genre, or strictly a representation of the black experience but as a visual negotiation between film as art and the discursivity of race. Gillespie challenges expectations that black film can or should represent the reality of black life or provide answers to social problems. Instead, he frames black film alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media, treating it as an interdisciplinary form that enacts black visual and expressive culture. Gillespie discusses the racial grotesque in Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin (1975), black performativity in Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street (1989), blackness and noir in Bill Duke's Deep Cover (1992), and how place and desire impact blackness in Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy (2008). Considering how each film represents a distinct conception of the relationship between race and cinema, Gillespie recasts the idea of black film and poses new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, historiography, and intertextuality.

Movies, stars, auteurs, critics, and the sheer excitement of cinema come together in film festivals as quintessential constellations of art, business, and glamour. Yet, how well do we actually understand the forces and meanings that these events embody?

Film Festivals offers the first comprehensive overview of the history, people, films, and multiple functions of the festival world. From Sundance to Hong Kong, from the glitter of Cannes to edgier festivals that challenge boundaries or foster LGBTQ cultural production, film festivals celebrate art, promote business, bring cinema to diverse audiences, and raise key issues about how we see our world. Cindy Hing-Yuk Wong situates festivals within changing global practices of film, including their important ties to both Hollywood and independent cinema. She explores how these events have become central in the construction of cinema knowledge as well as the behind-the-scene mechanics of finance, distribution, and evaluation. By linking general structures and connections to specific films and auteurs, Wong addresses the components and creation of film festivals that continue to reshape filmmaking as art and business.