The idea of the film emerged when the Producer found a catalogue by the academic David Driskell and found him teaching as a professor of black American painting at the University of Maryland. Dr Driskell narrates the film of the little known story of black American fine art. The film begins at the American Revolution and continues until the end of the Harlem Renaissance. The film is set against the social background of the times and the segregation faced by the painters.

Starting with the Joshua Johnson’s sadly titled self-portrait “Portrait of an Unknown Man” which reveals the inner conflict of the ‘high yellers’, it includes the works of Patrick Reason, Henry O Tanner, William H Johnson, Archibald Motley Jr., and Palmer Hayden. It uses the leitmotif of the four murals by Aaron Douglas, ‘Aspects of Negro Life from Slavery to Reconstruction’, 1934.

Filmed on location in Manhattan,NYC (on the streets, Columbia University, Cooper Union) University of Maryland at College Park and Milledgeville, Georgia.

The film can be found on the Arts Council of England’s art documentary website (www.artscouncil.org.uk) and is distributed in the USA by Landmark Films, Falls Church, Va. (tel. 1-800-342 4336; 703 241 2030 and fax 703 536 9540).  It was premiered at BAFTA in London and opened in Harlem’s Shomberg Center (in the Langston Hughes Theatre) by Bill Cosby in 1991. It continues to receive many showings during Black History Month in the USA.

colour,
52 minutes,
GB,
1989

Director:
Andrew Piddington

Producer:
Maureen McCue

Editor:
Paul Brown

Cameraman:
Robin MacDonald

Assistant Camera:
Margaret Gormley

Sound Recordist:
Steve Phillips

Picture and Archive Research: Maureen McCue

Music:
Jan Garbarek and others

Financed by: Channel 4 (UK)
and
The Arts Council of England

Cue Productions