<![CDATA[Jezebel: the black list]]> http://tags.gawker.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/jezebel.com.png <![CDATA[Jezebel: the black list]]> http://jezebel.com/tag/theblacklist http://jezebel.com/tag/theblacklist <![CDATA[HBO's The Black List: More Intimate Portraits Of Enigmatic People]]> Enthralling interviews are what make HBO's The Black List - which premiered last night - such an inspiring project. Touching videos ("living portraits") from Angela Davis, Maya Rudolph, Kara Walker, and others, after the jump.


Activist and professor Angela Davis was associated with the Black Panthers during the Civil Rights Movement. She was born in Alabama and grew up during a time of rigid segregation. In 1970, after a gun registered in her name was used to kill a judge, she became the third woman ever to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. (She was captured, tried and acquitted.)



Maya Rudolph is an actress and comedian famous for her stint on Saturday Night Live. Her father is a Jewish composer; her mother is the late singer Minnie Ripperton (whose most famous song is "Loving You").



Kara Walker is a fine artist from California with an MFA from RISD. Her work has been in The Renaissance Society in Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.



The first and only African-American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting, Suzanne de Passe is a former Motown Records exec who has produced TV shows and films such as Class Act, Sister, Sister, and Showtime at the Apollo.



Bishop T.D. Jakes is an entrepreneur and chief pastor of the The Potter's House, a 30,000 member non-denominational megachurch in Dallas. He's written more than 20 books and led the early morning prayer service for President-elect Barack Obama on inauguration day.


Not seen here, but included in The Black List: Volume 2: Actor Laurence Fishburne; Anglican Bishop Barbara Harris; Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick; physician and academic Valerie Montgomery-Rice, M.D.; filmmaker Tyler Perry; singer Charley Pride; fashion designer Patrick Robinson; musician RZA and filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles. Also, check out our earlier post on The Black List: Volume 1 for videos of Toni Morrison, Thelma Golden and Suzan Lori-Parks.

The Black List: Airing Schedule [HBO]
The Black List: Volume 2 [HBO]
Earlier: HBO's The Black List Offers Intimate Portraits Of Enigmatic Women

]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5161451&view=rss&microfeed=true <![CDATA[HBO's The Black List Offers Intimate Portraits Of Enigmatic Women]]> Former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell teamed up with acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders on The Black List, a series of "living portraits" conceived by Mitchell as an "answer to the persistent taint that western culture has applied to the word "black.'" (Volume 1 of the series premiered last night.) Mitchell conducted interviews with a diverse collection of people, including Slash, Vernon Jordan, Serena Williams, and Chris Rock. But there were three interviews we especially liked: those with Toni Morrison, Thelma Golden and Suzan Lori-Parks.
It was absolutely fascinating to listen to Toni Morrison speak about why she writes. "Writing for me is the only free place," Ms. Morrison explains. "It's the only place where I'm not doing what somebody else wants or asks or needs. Writing is mine."
As for Thelma Golden, who was the art curator at the Whitney Museum and now heads the Studio Museum in Harlem, she talks about her love of art. "I became a curator at a moment when there hadn't been many black curators," she explains. She also mentions the fact that some people in the art world assume she "works for" Thelma Golden, not that she is Thelma Golden, since she's black. She speaks about the impact Jean-Michel Basquiat had on her, as well as working at the Whitney and the "legacy of exclusion" there. But Ms. Golden is upbeat: She believes that the definition of art in one's home should be "wide."
Suzan Lori-Parks won the MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant in 2001, wrote the screenplay for Girl 6 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog in 2002. She talks about how many of the people who came to see Topdog/Underdog were young black kids with cell phones who felt like "active participants" in the theater. "We have to mine those riches," she claims.
It's interesting that Volume 1 of this documentary aired the same night that Michelle Obama gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, where she was supposed to "redefine" what an American black woman is. It's often said that in this culture, a black woman is portrayed as a mammy, a ho/drug addict or a sassy best friend. And that's it. But obviously there are many different types of black women in America, many different types of black experiences. The DNC is planned well in advance; but so is HBO's schedule. Did they pit the two events against each other on purpose?
The Black List [HBO] The Black List HBO Air Date Schedule [HBO]]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5041932&view=rss&microfeed=true