Black Film Gaze

Exploring film through our lens | Instagram @blackfilmgaze

[blackfilmgaze]

Tessa Thompson’s Three Latest Works Are Full of Rage—and She Couldn’t Be Happier

After taking a couple years out of the spotlight to build up her production company, Viva Maude, Thompson is back with a vengeance with 'Hed

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Happy birthday Ruth Negga! (May 4, 1981)

“I don’t think I’ve necessarily been able to pick and choose in my career, I don’t know how many people do. But I’ll tell you what I’ve been able to do, I’ve been able to say no. It is the only thing you can hold on to sometimes, is that ability to say ‘no.’ And I think that in that way you can create some kind of career. And then you can sort of lobby for the parts you want. Because I also don’t want to do parts that I don’t think I’d be any good at. I don’t need to be everywhere, I don’t need to be working all the time. I don’t need to be doing parts just because I think it’s a stepping stone to getting somewhere else. What I have wanted to do is take roles that are unexpected for people who look like me. Roles that the establishment would say, ‘Oh, she couldn’t possibly be that.’ Because, why not?” (2016)

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TAYLOUR PAIGE IN ZOLA (2020)

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GIRL 6 (1996) dir. Spike Lee

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Cane River (1982) // dir. Horace B. Jenkins

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Guns of the Trees (1961)

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Ayo Edebiri as Ariel Ecton — OPUS (2025) dir. Mark Anthony Green

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2025: Black Movies 🎬 🎞

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Dahomey (2024) | dir. Mati Diop

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Lynn Whitfield in Eve’s Bayou (1997). Photographed by Marietta Carter-Narcisse.

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"What's with the arsenal, Bernadette? We're only going eight blocks." | "You're the one who got us dressed like cops." | "I said just dress up conservatively." | "Yeah, well we look like cops." Horror Character Appreciation - Kasi Lemmons as Bernadette Walsh in Candyman (1992) dir. Bernard Rose

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Love, Brooklyn (2025) dir. Rachael Abigail Holder

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Diana Ross in Mahogany (1975) Dir. Berry Gordy

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The French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop has been described as “African film royalty.” Her mother was born in Paris, and worked as a photographer—and once as a Sahara guide—before pursuing a career in advertising as an art director. Her father is a guitarist and composer who emigrated from Dakar to Paris; his jazz-rock fusion band helped to establish the city’s world-music scene. And, if that wasn’t enough, her uncle is the legendary Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty—who earned a permanent place in the pantheon of world cinema with “Touki Bouki.”

At first, Diop wanted to become a singer-songwriter, training her voice on Aaliyah songs and learning bass in emulation of Meshell Ndegeocello. But by 18 she was thinking about becoming a director. One source of inspiration was a scene of Gena Rowlands dancing in John Cassavetes’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” which showed her how camerawork could expand a performer’s range of self-expression. “I was moved by the space that was made for that woman to be,” Diop told Julian Lucas.

With her début feature, “Atlantics”—a gothic romance, a political fable about labor and migration, and an homage to Dakar, Senegal—Diop won international renown. But she passed on big-budget Hollywood projects (including “The Woman King”) before making her latest film, a fantastical documentary about art restitution. “Dahomey,” which chronicles the repatriation of 26 royal treasures from France’s Musée du Quai Branly to Benin, has reignited a moribund international debate about art restitution and transformed Diop into a French media fixture. “I wanted to make a film that would restore our desire for ourselves,” she said. Read Lucas’s profile of the filmmaker: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/Vx_yXq

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ONE OF THEM DAYS (2025) starring KEKE PALMER & SZA dir. Lawrence Lamont

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AYO EDEBIRI

Before the academy gala by Morgan Maher (October 2024)

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[blackfilmgaze]

Candyman (2021) dir. Nia DaCosta