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Gordon Parks Jr. has just turned director and completed shooting his first feature, Superfly. An independent production, the film, about a Harlem hustler confronting his world, is still in the adventure genre but with deeper implications. "There's more energy here," said the younger Parks on his set. "It's a lot more relaxed, more informal. Our crews are smaller and communication is better—most black film makers want to be realistic." Says Hugh Robertson, a black film editor hired by MGM to direct his first movie: "Some of the stories we'd like to make are still too potent for the studios to tackle, but the masses can be educated." Ossie Davis is even more optimistic. "The impact made on American music can be duplicated in film," he says. "It can become our medium. As outsiders in America, our life-style is richer, more rhythmic and colorful, and we may have retained enough vitality to regenerate the culture."
Depending on one's point of view, Davis' vision may seem like an expanded version of a racial cliché, or like a black rhapsody. His approach, however, is practical. As president of Third World Cinema, a film company that is also a New York-based community project, he is helping young blacks learn about all aspects of film making. With federal funding, TWC has established an on-the-job training program for aspiring black and Puerto Rican moviemakers, with 53 apprentices now working, and a film school is in the planning stages. TWC's film plans are appropriately ambitious. They include a biography of Billie Holiday (Motown, a black record company, is already shooting its version of the Billie Holiday story, starring Diana Ross), a film from the works of Puerto Rican Author Piri Thomas, and an adaptation of John O. Killens' chilling war novel, And Then We Heard the Thunder.
The number of blacks on both sides of the camera has increased by several hundred percent over the past two years. Still, on most black movies, the technicians, who must be highly trained and union members, are predominantly white. This prompted CORE in January to send a list of seven demands for money, jobs and control to all studios planning to film in Harlem. Some of these seemed negotiable; others, like script approval, were unrealistic. Goldwyn, who made peace with CORE and other groups to finish Charleston Blue on location, points out that film makers may simply "start recreating Harlem in Albuquerque. It's cheaper and easier."
Back in the Hollywood dream factory, AIP, the company responsible for all those beach-blanket movies, motorcycle epics and Vincent Price horror shows, is cashing in on the trend in its own way. Black Director William Crain recently completed shooting the first all-black vampire movie: Blacula.