A New Film Series Teases Out the Complex History of Black Heroines On Screen

From trailblazing Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel to Halle Berry — the first (and so far the only) Black woman to win an Oscar for a leading role — Black actresses have toiled for decades in an industry that has preferred to place them on the sidelines of the story than at the center.

At the Museum of Modern Art, a recent film series, It’s All in Me: Black Heroines, exhibits an acute awareness of this cinematic history. A celebration of the more substantial roles that Black actresses have played from 1907 to 2018, the two-week program also reflects an interrogation of the complexities of those representations. Interestingly, this series — organized by MoMA staffers Steve Macfarlane, Dara Ojugbele and Marta Zeamanuel — comes on the heels of another recent Black woman-themed series at New York City’s Film Forum, curated by noted film historian Donald Bogle and experimental filmmaker and media preservationist Ina Archer.

“Each film in the series, in its own way, provides a more authentic connection to Black women’s expression, stories and experiences,” said Ojugbele, who is also a program manager at New York’s African Film Festival, in a recent interview about the film series.