Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Art History
Advisor
Siona Wilson
Committee Members
Michael Boyce Gillespie
Claire Bishop
Paula Massood
Subject Categories
African American Studies | American Art and Architecture | American Film Studies | Contemporary Art | Film and Media Studies | Modern Art and Architecture | Theory and Criticism
Keywords
Experimental Cinema, Black Film, U.S.-American Film, Black Freedom, Video Art, Race
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the ways in which a diverse and disparate group of moving image artists, working from the mid-1960s to early 1980s, intervened in and attempted to reimagine the cinematic medium, in response to the highly mediatized manifestations of Black freedom. Charting a new understanding of the intersections between experimental cinema and practices of Black freedom and drawing on in-depth archival research, I show how some of the most significant experimentations of the postwar moving image avant-garde were driven by an interest in Black liberation struggles. Rather than look solely to the representation of such struggles, however, I investigate the ways in which this interest compelled artists to redefine the aesthetic, social, and structural forms of the cinema. The case studies on William Greaves, Edward Owens, Stan VanDerBeek, Paul Sharits, and L.A. Rebellion filmmakers Haile Gerima, Monona Wali, Larry Clark, and Bernard Nicolas, span the late 1960s to the early 1980s, a periodization that coincides with the emergence of Black Power and traces its immediate afterlives. Bringing together white, Black, and, in the case of Wali, Indian American artists, often siloed into separate categories due to race, medium, or movement, I ask what possibilities exist for solidarity, and for the re-making of social relations in, around, and by the cinema. Across these case studies, I articulate a theory of the disorganization of the cinema as it fragmented into different media and organizations of media, and as artists searched for new cinematic forms and formats.
Recommended Citation
Gill, Kirsten M., "Movement Image: Black Freedom in Experimental Film and Video, 1965–1985" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6361
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Art and Architecture Commons, American Film Studies Commons, Contemporary Art Commons, Film and Media Studies Commons, Modern Art and Architecture Commons, Theory and Criticism Commons
