Vet thesp Ossie Davis, center, talks with Orlando Bagwell and Lee Daniels in Harlem at the launch party for George Alexander's book 'Why We Make Movies: Black Filmmakers Talk About the Magic of Cinema.'
NEW YORK -- A book party turned into a discussion about race and Hollywood last week at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where a panel of filmmakers convened to launch
George Alexander's new book "Why We Make Movies: Black Filmmakers Talk About the Magic of Cinema."
Chat addressed Hollywood's reality during the
Variety-sponsored confab.
"Monster's Ball" producer
Lee Daniels struck a nerve when he talked about the reaction to Halle Berry's Oscar win for a role that some saw as degrading to black women.
"When I got that backlash, it knocked me down," Daniels said. "Everyone talked about Halle's win, but no one talked about the film's crew being 90% black."
"The challenge is not just to represent ourselves in heroic form," said docu lenser
Orlando Bagwell. "We are a complex people. The question is how to bring that to film."
Ossie Davis presided as the evening's gravel-voiced patriarch, noting: "Young black filmmakers do with movies what Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington did for music. They enoble the human spirit, not push it down."
Warrington Hudlin,
Malcolm Lee and
Kathe Sandler rounded out the panel.
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