University Communications "Selling Race: Cinematic Poster Art" Exhibit Opens March 22 at Emory WHAT: "Selling Race: Cinematic Poster Art From Race Films to Blaxploitation," an exhibition of items from Emory's African-American Cinema Collection. WHEN: Exhibit opening 5-7 p.m. Thursday, March 23. Exhibit runs through May 30, 2000 WHERE: Schatten Gallery, Robert W. Woodruff Library, 540 Asbury Circle, Emory. For a map of campus, go on-line to www.emory.edu/MAP/. COST: Free and open to the public. For more information, call 404-727-6861. Gallery hours are 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-8 p.m. Sunday. A new exhibit opening March 22 in Schatten Gallery of Woodruff Library illustrates how commercial art was used to promote movies to African Americans from the1920s to 1970s, and looks at documents from Atlanta's official film censor, Mrs. Richardson, in a new light. "Selling Race: Cinematic Poster Art From Race Films to Blaxploitation" contains items from Emory's African-American Cinema Collection, an archive of film ephemera that complements the research of Emory professors Dana White and Matthew Bernstein into "Segregated Cinema: Atlanta From the Cotton States Exhibition to the Olympic Games." The posters, lobby cards and press books in the exhibit illustrate the range of offerings for black audiences from the positive images of "race films" in the 1920s and 30s; to tentative sketches in race relations motion pictures of the 1930s and 40s; to integration and "blaxploitation" films of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. No similar collection exists in the Southeast, and it shows the delicate business of selling race-related movies to white and black audiences. Other topics in by the "Selling Race" exhibit are the little-known African-American film making community in Hollywood that existed 75 years before Spike Lee and Denzel Washington; records of Atlanta's official film censors between 1915-64; the influence of the South's civil rights movement on Hollywood films; the era of "blaxploitation" in the 1970s; the black athlete as movie star; and black stars of the1950s. Bernstein and White were assisted in researching and writing the exhibition materials by graduate students Randy Gue and Gordon L. Jones, along with undergraduate and graduate students in White's segregated cinema course. Bernstein and White currently are working on a book sharing the results of their segregated cinema research that should be published next year.
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