The Art of Film Blackness: A Conversation with Michael Boyce Gillespie on Film Blackness and the Idea of Black Film

Longo interviews author Michael Boyce Gillespie about his book, Film Blackness and the Idea of Black Film. Gillespie discusses the films he has chosen to analyze, such as Chamelon Street, as well as the extrafilmic texts with which he puts them in dialogue, from Ralph Ellison to Manthia Diawara. He credits Mikhail Bakhtin for helping him to reframe the "racial grotesque," and he uses the literary work of Chester Himes to think through Medicine for Melancholy--while also linking the film to the Mumblecore movement in indie film.