Cinema Junkie presents Midday Movies celebrate Black women
WARNING CLIPS CONTAIN EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE.
JADE HINDMON I’m Jade Hindmon. To close out Black History Month, our Midday Movies Critics wanted to create a suggested viewing list to celebrate Black women on screen and behind the camera, and to remind people that celebrating Black film does not have to end on February 28th. Once again, I'd like to welcome back KPBS cinema junkie, Beth Acomando and movie Wallace's podcaster, Yazdi Pithavala. Welcome to you both.
BETH ACCOMANDO Thank you.
JADE HINDMON Well, to start this list, you both wanted to highlight an actress. And Beth, do you want to reveal who this actress is?
BETH ACCOMANDO Yes. And I think what I'd like to do, instead of a drum roll to announce her, I want to just play this trailer as an intro.
CLIP When Foxy Brown comes to town, all the brothers gather round because she can really shake them down. Pam Grier, that one-chick hit squad who creamed you as coffee, is back to do a job on the mob as Foxy Brown. You tell me who you want done, and I'll do the hell out of him.
BETH ACCOMANDO A chick with drive who don't take no jive. That woman, she's crazy. No telling what she'll do. And there is no telling what Pam Greer will do. There might be other actresses whose body of work has been more honored, but I will say Pam Greer is not only a fine actress who's proven that in a number films, but she is also a pop culture icon, and that has so much power to it. I mean, Cicely Tyson and Ruby Dee might have more awards, but you are not seeing their faces on T-shirts today. They are not having retrospectives of their films. But Pam Greer is someone who is still celebrated on the screen. People still will come out to her movies. I got to see her in person up in Portland. And when I saw her in Portland, she talked about getting her first job, which was with Roger Corman. And they sent her off to the Philippines for a shoot, and the plane was driving over and they said, I'm going to slow down for you to jump out. And she said, What are you talking about? And he said, No, I'm serious. And he said, I'm sorry, you missed your chance.
BETH ACCOMANDO I'm going to circle around, either you jump out with your bag or you have to take a two-hour bus to get to the location. So he slowed down and she jumped out, and she started a career in movies and eventually made it into a lot of very well-known Blaxploitation films like Coffy, Foxy Brown, Friday Foster.
JADE HINDMON The story of resilience there. But Cicely , this is why you can't just pick one actress because Cicely Tyson is perfection. She is. Now, I mean, there's so many to pick. A different perfection. Yeah, So many great actresses. But Greer made a number of very successful Blaxploitation films, as you said, and that was in the '70s. But these films are sometimes criticized for being, as their name implies, exploitative.
BETH ACCOMANDO Yes. And there are a range of Blaxploitation films. I do think that Pam Greer's best films, like Coffy and Foxy Brown, stand the test of time. But these films open the doors to a lot of Black artists. People like Gordon Parks got his first opportunity to direct for a major Hollywood studio. People like Jim Brown and Richard Roundtree made it in. And I would argue that these films also helped pave the way for directors like John Singleton, Spike Lee, and even now Ryan Coogler. And I will say, a lot of Pam Greer's films, she's forced to drip down or take abuse. But the thing you remember is that she triumphs over all these people, and she kicks some major ass. I was a young girl in the '70s, and her image was really impactful to me. I loved being able to see someone who had this power and force. As I mentioned, one of her best films was Foxy Brown. In this scene, she approaches a group which is fashioned after like the Black Panther Party, and she basically wants them to help her fight drugs and corruption coming from this white mob.
CLIP What is it you really want? Justice. For whom? Your brother? Why not? It could be your other two, or your sister, or your children. I want justice for all of them. And I want justice for all the other people whose lives are bought and sold so that a few big shots can climb up on their backs and laugh at the law and laugh at human decency. And most of all, I want justice for a good man. This man had love in his heart, and he died because he went out of his neighborhood to try to do what he thought was right. Sister, I think what you're asking for is revenge. You just take care of the justice, and I'll handle the revenge myself.
JADE HINDMON Well, you just preach it, Pam. Okay? Now, Yazdi, you are also a fan of Grier. What is it that you like about her?
YAZDI PITHAVALA Yeah, two things. One is, as Beth mentioned, it is that her sexuality was a big part of her power in all of her films. She wrote that proudly through the '70s and '80s female liberation movement. So she never tried to disown it or disassociate it. She embraced it, as Beth mentioned earlier. And Quentin Tarantino rightly called her the first female action star of American cinema. Which is not bad for someone who started as a receptionist in Los Angeles. And along those lines, the second point is that she has survived over decades. I mean, here we are in 2025, and we are still speaking about her. Even after her heydays with the Blacksploitation films, she was a regular on Miami Vice on television. She was in action films with Steven Segal in the late 1980s. And Tarantino, after having come off this huge high following the success of Pulp Fiction, gave her the lead role in his next film, which was Jackie Brown. And again, she's continued supporting roles in a variety of films, including movies from Tim Burton as well as John Carpenter. She was in Mars Attacks as well as Ghosts of Mars, which reflects the love that all of these filmmakers have had for her.
YAZDI PITHAVALA And to give you an example, here is a really crackling scene of Jackie Brown asserting herself during an interrogation in the film Jackie Brown. What in the bag she gave you?
CLIP She didn't give me a bag. Melanie was not a part of the plan. Hordale probably told her to do it. That's why she came into the dressing room, grabbed the bag, took off, but I couldn't go after her because I was in my fucking underwear. I had to put on this suit because I could put it on faster than my uniform. You had time to pay the sales check. I had to. I was frantic. What was I supposed to do? All right, what'd you do after that? I went looking for you. And I went back to the place in the mall where you were before, but you weren't there. What was I supposed to do if something happened? You didn't tell me how to do that, did you? There's a guy with Melanie? There was nobody in the fitting room. Okay. You've no idea what a $50,000. You're clueless about the money, right? You have no idea what a 50 grand. I have no idea. None. You have no idea? You don't know? It could have gone here. No, I don't know. I know nothing. Not a clue. I don't have an idea where the motherfucking money is. Not even a little idea, maybe. Not even a little tiny motherfucking idea. You took a polygraph on that. Yeah, I'm going to motherfucking make you happy. Yeah, put her right there. I'll do it.
JADE HINDMON There are a lot of other Black actresses that deserve shoutouts in addition to Greer, but we're going to move on to highlight some Black women behind the camera. Beth, who do you want to highlight in Spotlight today?
BETH ACCOMANDO Yes. Because people seem to have a short term memory, I always like to go back a little further in the past to remind people of some ground-breaking work that's been done that maybe isn't as well known these days. So I want to highlight Julie Dash, who directed the 1991 film, Daughters of the Dust. This is noteworthy as being the first full-length feature film directed by an African-American woman that got a general theatrical release in the US. It's a gorgeous film, and it recently got a new 4K restoration. This film is set in 1902. It's a poetic nonlinear film. It serves up a fictionalized account of a Gula family who lives off the Coast of Southeastern United States. And in this scene, there's a character who recounts a tale of slave resistance from 1803.
CLIP The slavery time, the war on my ground always talk about those people did miss a thing. Even seeing you and me standing here talk. When they got through, sizing up the place real good and seeing what was to come, my grand said, they turned All of them, and walk back in the water. Every last man, woman, and child. Now you wouldn't think they'd get very fast seeing as hit was what the day was walk on. Had all that iron ponder. Pond their ankle and their wrist, and fasten round their neck like No color. But she didn't stop doors, ebo none. They just kept walk like the water was solid ground.
BETH ACCOMANDO So Julie Dash hasn't made a lot feature films recently. She had announced doing a biopic of Angela Davis, which I hope happens, but most of her work these days has been directing television.
JADE HINDMON Wow. And that would be great. And Yazdi, which director would you like to highlight?
YAZDI PITHAVALA So I want to I'd like to highlight Kasi Lemons, whose most celebrated work is the movie Eve's Bayou. Kasi Lemons started as a very hardworking actress through most of the '80s and early '90s, and incidentally, she was in the original 1992 Candy film as an actress. And then with Eve's Bayou in 1997, incidentally, the same year that Jackie Brown came out. And Eve's Bayou is this gorgeous Southern Gothic melodrama with Lynn Whitfield and Samuel L. Jackson. And if anybody has not seen this, boy, are they in for a treat? It's really worth seeking out. It's a gorgeous, beautiful film with so much surrealism and mysteries, and it's just a very complete piece of work. She followed up with the movie Caveman's Valentine, also with Samuel L. Jackson, which was less of a commercial success, but still a movie that holds up very well. And then her other film, which is also very well regarded, is Talk to Me with Dawn Cheadle, playing Ralph P. D. Green, who was an incarcerated man who became a talk show host and then a major political activist in the '60s. I cannot wait for her to get back and do more films.
YAZDI PITHAVALA By way of an introduction to Eve's Bayou. Here's a clip from the movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Jurnee Smollet playing Father and daughter.
CLIP You love Mama? Your mama is the most beautiful, perfect woman I ever met. Your mama's a lady, and I always love her. Always. Do you understand? Stand. Daddy? Yes, baby. How come you never dance with me? Baby, how can you say your daddy never dances with you? When we're alone and stuff, but not at parties, we always dance with Cécile. Tell you what, from now on, we'll dance at every party, right?
JADE HINDMON Wow, a very young Jurnee Smollet there. Yes. And Yasdi, the other movie that you mentioned, too. Talk to me. The story of Petey Green, one of my favorites. The best line in that movie was, He's a corner pimp who I wouldn't trust to wash my car, but she all done elected him. Wow. Does that applied to so many things. Okay. Beth, your next director pick also made her debut in the 1990s, along with Julie Dash and Kasi Lemmons. Who is she?
BETH ACCOMANDO This is Cheryl Dunye, and she was part of the queer new wave of the 1990s. So she was jumping multiple hurdles as a female filmmaker, a Black filmmaker, and a queer filmmaker. And Watermelon Woman was her feature film debut, and it's still my favorite of hers It's the most innovative and most interesting. Like Julie Dash, she mostly directs TV nowadays. But Watermelon Woman was this self-reflexive film examining not just herself as an artist, but also the medium of film itself and also representation. So this is a clip from the film in which Dunier plays a young woman who is about to make a film, a documentary about an actress she has discovered.
CLIP Hi, I'm and I'm a filmmaker. No, I'm not really a filmmaker, but I have a videotaping business with my friend, Tamra, and I work at a video store, so I'm working on being a filmmaker. The problem is I don't know what I want to make a film on. I know it has to be about black women because our stories have never been told. So I've been running movies. No, I haven't been renting movies, but I get movies from the video store that I work at, and I've taken all these films out from the '30s and '40s with black actresses in them, like Hattie Daniel and Louise Beavers. And in these films, in some of the films, the black actresses aren't even listed in the credits, and I was just totally shocked by that. So in this one film that came into the store, Plantation Memories, I saw the most beautiful black Mammy named Elsie. Her name, the Watermelon Woman. That's right. Watermelon Woman. Is Watermelon Woman her first name, her last name, or is it her whole name? I don't know, but Girlfriend has a going on, and I think I've figured out what my project is going to be on. I'm going to make a movie about her. I'm going to find out what her real name is, who she was and is, everything I can find out about her, because something in her face, something in the way she looks and moves is serious, is interesting. I'm going to just tell you all about it.
JADE HINDMON Yazdi, you have a director who made her feature debut in 2000. Who is that?
YAZDI PITHAVALA That would be Gina Prince-Blythwood, who made her directorial debut with the wonderful movie Love and Basketball. What I like about her is her versatility. She obviously started with making this wonderfully grounded rom-com by way of Love and Basketball. And again, if nobody's seen it, what a wonderful film to discover. But at the same time, she's also made more edgy movies like Beyond the Lights, which is a wonderful contemporary exploration of Race and Celebrity, something that a lot of filmmakers have not assessed. And then most recently, Gina Prince-Blythwood has been very successful by taking on full-bodied, full-blooded action films for Hollywood. She made the excellent action thriller, The Old Guard with Charlize Theron, which is still on Netflix. And then most recently, the Viola Davis starring The Woman King in 2022. Here's a clip from the trailer for The Woman King.
CLIP An evil is coming that threatens our kingdom, our freedom. But we have a weapon they are not prepared for. My King, the Europeans wish to conquer us. They will not stop until the whole of Africa is theirs. We must fight back for our people. My name is God. You're asking me to take them to war. Some things are worth fighting for.
JADE HINDMON I mean, intensely good movie. You can hear it just in the trailer. But for me, it's like anything with Ava DuVernay or Lena Waith. I am so into that. But these are all some impressive women. Are there any young, new female Black directors we should have on our radar to see what they do next?
BETH ACCOMANDO Too many, I think. But I will highlight a couple of them that I've discovered in 2023. They both made their feature film debut that year. A.V. Rockwell, who did 1001, and then poet Raven Jackson made All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. And that was just such a gorgeous visual poem. And as a first-time director, her assurance and how she put that film together was just amazing. These are women who have made one film that was remarkable. I can't wait to see what they do next. But there are actually quite a few women whose work is coming up that I am looking forward to as well. I mean, an actress like Regina King has tried her hand at directing. So there's a lot of hope and potential on the horizon here.
JADE HINDMON A lot of things to really be excited about. Yazdi, what about you?
YAZDI PITHAVALA I like Beth. I'm so excited with so many young female Black directors who have come up with remarkably assured debut films. I love the work of Raine Allen-Miller, who is a British writer and filmmaker, and she debuted with the movie Rye Lane, which is streaming on Hulu, which is this gorgeous love story where these two Black characters meet and walk through the streets of London for a day. And that's all the movie is. But it makes you fall in love with London. It makes you fall in love with both of these characters. It inverts typical romantic tropes. And best of all, that movie knows how to light dark-skinned lead actors. These actors are gorgiously lit, and it's such a treat to watch the movie, and I cannot wait to see what she does next. I was also very impressed by Janiska Bravo, who made Zola, the movie which came out just a couple of years ago, about the wildest road trip that you can think of. And that movie was actually based, shockingly, in reality, based on a whole bunch of tweets that were posted by a Florida woman. And Zola, again, is such a wild ride that I would recommend to anyone.
YAZDI PITHAVALA So again, another filmmaker. I'm eager to see what she does next.
JADE HINDMON All of these sound fantastic. I want to thank our Midday movie critics. Kpbs Cinema Junkie, Beth Acomando, and movie Wallace's podcaster, Yasi Patavala. You can watch our Midday Movies podcast now on the KPBS YouTube channel to see clips from all the films. You can also find a more detailed list of the films at bethcinemajunkieblog@kpbs. Org. Beth and Yasdie, thank you so much. Thank you.
YAZDI PITHAVALA Thank you, Jade.
JADE HINDMON We will go out with Pam Grier singing Longtime Woman from the Big Doll House, which Quentin Tarantino then used in Jackie Brown.
CLIP I'm a long time woman, and I'm serving my time.
