Opinion | The Problem With ‘Anti-Racist’ Movie Lists

Such films have existed since the beginning of American cinema. At first glance, the recently discovered short film “Something Good Negro Kiss,” from 1898, appears to be a joyous rendering of Black people in love, but as the film historian Allyson Field argues, the Black performers actually seem to be satirizing Thomas Edison’s “The Kiss” from two years prior.

The 1913 film “Lime Kiln Club Field Day” features the Black minstrel performer Bert Williams wearing blackface makeup, and complicates our understanding of the art form. His presence alongside non-blackfaced Black actors draws focus to the performative, rather than racist, aspects of blackface. It demonstrates how Black performers sometimes used the makeup as a mask to differentiate between cinematic tropes of blackness and “real” Black people, a practice that indicates a keen awareness — yes, even then — of how cinema functions in relation to representation.

Though we keep insisting on the importance of “authenticity” in Black representations (a fraught and contested term), these early examples suggest Black modalities that were wry and subversive, and which understood the difference between performance and reality. How different might our understanding of the history of film be today, had these been the starting point for what we imagine Black film was, is and can be yet?