Reformulating Black Cinematic Labor

Considering the 2022 film , this essay pushes beyond indexical and ontological readings of blackness in film in order to consider how invisible forms of blackness—in particular, the labor of black film workers—are inscribed in the film text. It argues that the inscription of black labor and a reading of film as an effect of labor supply a reformulation of a deracinated film formalism. Mining 's self‐reflexive gestures, the essay explores the film's reformulation of American film history and its navigation of the invisible and the spectacular as the limited forms of manifesting blackness in cinema.