Other library resource(s)
Afro promo by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #9461ISBN: 9780976523949A collection of 30 trailers for films starring, directed by, and/or marketed to African Americans from the years 1952-1976.
BaadAssss cinema: a bold look at 70's blaxploitation films by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #1235ISBN: 9780767049634In this groundbreaking documentary from the Independent Film channel, filmmaker Isaac Julien takes us back to the early 70s and the explosion of blaxploitation films, today one of American cinema's most beloved cult genres. The original guilty pleasure, these fun and energetic films had all the action, comedy, sex and groovy music you could want in two hours worth of entertainment.
Exploitation film from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286Exploitation film is a type of cinema, often cheaply produced, that is designed to create a fast profit by referring to, or exploiting, contemporary cultural anxieties. Examples include films about drug use, nudity and striptease, sexual deviance, rebellious youths or gangs, violence in society, xenophobia, and fear of terrorism or alien invasions. ...
How to eat your watermelon in white company (and enjoy it) by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #9463A tale of how a young black kid from Chicago, Melvin Van Peebles, ended up making one of the most controversial movies in American history, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, the film that sparked the Blaxploitation era in Hollywood.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for all facets of Film Studies? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
A quick definition for blaxploitation films
A variant of the exploitation film consisting of low- to mid-budget, non-mainstream, US genre films released between 1970 and 1975, starring black actors in key roles, and originally intended for black urban audiences. Blaxploitation films range across a number of genres, including the crime film (Black Caesar (Larry Cohen, 1973)), the horror film (Blacula (William Crain, 1972)), and the western (Boss Nigger (Jack Arnold, 1974)). Nonetheless, the films share many characteristics, including strong black protagonists with anti-authoritarian attitudes, predominantly black urban settings (replacing the southern settings of earlier race films (see black cinema (us)), rhythm-and-blues soundtracks (often with extended montage sequences set to music), culturally specific dress codes and language use, high levels of violence, and a liberated attitude towards sex.
Kuhn, A. and Westwell, G. (2020). "Blaxploitation." In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 01 Jul. 2022
Finding library resources for blaxploitation films
To find what we have in the Library's collection, you can do a subject search for "blaxploitation films" in the online catalog. That search will show you what film titles are classified as these films as well as books and other items about them. As you look at the list under blaxploitation films, the subject headings which include "history and criticism" critically talk about the genre itself.
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blaxploitation filmsCall number range PN 1995.9 .N4 on Baker Level 4.
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african americans in motion picturesCall number range is PN 1995.9 .N4 on Baker Level 4.
Introductory reading(s)
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Beyond Blaxploitation by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780814340776Beyond Blaxploitation, the first book-length anthology of scholarly work on blaxploitation film, sustains the momentum that blaxploitation scholarship has recently gained, giving the films an even more prominent place in cinema history. ... -
Blaxploitation cinema: the essential reference guide by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 H68 2008ISBN: 9781903254448Dazzling, highly stylised, excessively violent and brimming with sex, blaxploitation films enjoyed a brief but memorable moment in motion picture history. Never before - and never since - have so many African-American performers been featured in films, not in bit parts, but in starring roles. -
Blaxploitation films by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 K68 2010ISBN: 9781842433348In the early 1970s, a type of film emerged that featured all-black casts, really cool soul, R'n'B and disco soundtracks, characters sporting big guns, big dashikis and even bigger 'fros and some of the meanest, baddest attitudes ever to shoot their way across the big screen. Blaxploitation Films considers this genre from the perspective of class and racial rebellion with over 60 blaxploitation movies reviewed and discussed. -
The Routledge companion to cult cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781138950276The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema offers an overview of the field of cult cinema - films at the margin of popular culture and art that have received exceptional cultural visibility and status mostly because they break rules, offend, and challenge understandings of achievement (some are so bad they're good, others so good they remain inaccessible). Cult cinema is no longer only comprised of the midnight movie or the extreme genre film. Its range has widened and the issues it broaches have become battlegrounds in cultural debates that typify the first quarter of the twenty-first century. ... -
Women of blaxploitation: how the black action film heroine changed American popular culture by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 S56 2006ISBN: 9780786427444With the Civil Rights movement of the sixties fresh in their perspective, movie producers of the early 1970s began to make films aimed toward the under-served African American audience. Over the next five years or so, a number of cheaply made, so-called blaxploitation movies featured African American actresses in roles which broke traditional molds. Typically long on flash and violence but lacking in character depth and development, this genre nonetheless did a great deal toward redefining the perception of African American actresses, breaking traditional African American female stereotypes and laying the groundwork for later feminine action heroines. This critical study examines the ways in which the blaxploitation heroines of the early 1970s reshaped the presentation of African American actresses on screen and, to a certain degree, the perception of African American females in general. ...
Selected book titles
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Baad bitches and sassy supermamas: Black power action films by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 D86 2008ISBN: 9780252075483This lively study unpacks the intersecting racial, sexual, and gender politics underlying the representations of racialized bodies, masculinities, and femininities in early 1970s black action films, with particular focus on the representation of black femininity. -
Frame by frame II: a filmography of the African American image, 1978-1994 by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 K58 1997ISBN: 9780253211200Listed here are films with black themes or subject matter; films featuring substantial participation by Blacks as screenwriters, actors, producers, directors, musicians, and consultants; and films in which Blacks play incidental roles. Productions made between 1978 and 1994 are included. Each entry is categorized by type and fully identified and annotated, with complete cast lists. -
Historical dictionary of African American cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781442247017Publication Date: 2nd ed.As early as 1909, African Americans were utilizing the new medium of cinema to catalogue the world around them, using the film camera as a device to capture their lives and their history. The daunting subject of race and ethnicity permeated life in America at the turn of the twentieth century and due to the effect of certain early films, specific television images, and an often-biased news media, it still plagues us today. As new technologies bring the power of the moving image to the masses, African Americans will shoot and edit on laptop computers and share their stories with a global audience via the World Wide Web. These independently produced visions will add to the diverse cache of African American images being displayed on an ever-expanding silver screen. This wide range of stories, topics, views, and genres will finally give the world a glimpse of African American life that has long been ignored and has yet to be seen. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. ... -
Reflections on blaxploitation: actors and directors speak by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 R46 2009ISBN: 9780810867062In the early 1970s, a new breed of film emerged that would completely change the way black people were presented in movies. With their afros picked to spherical perfection and their guns blazing, big bad soul brothers and super sexy sisters lit up movie theaters across the country. Never before had black men and women appeared on screen in quite this way. In time, these films would be called "blaxploitation." And while it has long been debated exactly which film launched the blaxploitation era, the financial success of Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Gordon Parks's Shaft helped open the flood gates for the more than 200 films that are now considered blaxploitation. Reflections on Blaxploitation: Actors and Directors Speak is a collection of interviews with many of the men and women who defined the genre. ... -
Soul searching: Black-themed cinema from the March on Washington to the rise of blaxploitation by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 S54 2011ISBN: 9780819571335The sixties were a tremendously important time of transition for both civil rights activism and the U.S. film industry. Soul Searching examines a subject that, despite its significance to African American film history, has gone largely unexplored until now. By revisiting films produced between the march on Washington in 1963 and the dawn of the blaxploitation movie cycle in 1970, Christopher Sieving reveals how race relations influenced black-themed cinema before it was recognized as commercially viable by the major studios.
Finding articles & using SUMMON
Articles and other writings about movies can be found in many publications. Our collection does not include a journal or magazine which looks exclusively at blaxploitation films. Other film journals within our collection will cover these films. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find relevant articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
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Black studies centerCall Number: Electronic resourceThis fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies includes scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, and more. -
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about blaxploitation films. -
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie titles
Find more films in the library's online catalog.
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Cleopatra Jones by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #16005ISBN: 9780790740003A beautiful, tough drug enforcement agent intercedes when a menacing drug ring attempts to stage a retaliatory raid on a Los Angeles drug rehabilitation center. -
Coffy by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #16004ISBN: 9780792848271Coffy, a young nurse, takes vengeance on the powerful drug ring that destroyed her younger sister's life. -
Foxy Brown by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #16071ISBN: 9780792848295Foxy Brown (Grier) finally has found the love of her life. He is an undercover narcotics investigator who is later murdered in cold blood. In order to find the killers, she goes undercover as a call girl. -
Hell up in Harlem by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18661A man is hunted by the mob after he discovers a ledger with the names of every crooked police officer and public official on the mob's payroll. -
Shaft by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #14519ISBN: 9780790743752Detective John Shaft is hired by a Harlem mobster to find his kidnapped teenage daughter and finds himself up against some Mafia chieftains who want to take over a chunk of the black underworld's uptown territory. -
The spook who sat by the door by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #7100The CIA's first black officer uses his training in organizing an army made up of gang members to destroy the white power structure in America. -
Super fly by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #14479ISBN: 9780790785370Priest is a cocaine dealer who is just smart enough to know that there's no real future in dealing coke, and makes a proposal to his partner Eddie that would leave them with a million dollar profit each. But Scatter, the dealer who set Priest up in the cocaine trade, is both unwilling and unable to sell them that much product. As Priest looks for a new source for his big score, one of his underlings, Fat Freddie, is picked up by the police. Freddie tells the cops about Priest's underground empire. Priest is confronted by corrupt cops who want to become his partner. -
Trouble man by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #6504Cold as ice, hard as steel, and dressed to thrill, a private investigator known oly as "Mr. T" (Robert Hooks) is hired by two thugs to fing out who's stealing from their gambling operation. Armed with dealy martial arts mastery and an arsenal of weapons, T battles his way through a dangerous maze of violence, turf wars and even murder--while still finding time for the ladies.
