BBC - Culture - A renaissance of black cinema?: Celebrated US movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was working the press a few nights ago at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art where his latest film, Fruitvale Station, was being given its New York launch. It’s a picture based on the last 24 hours in the life a young black man fatally shot by a white police officer in California in 2009. The movie is in the vanguard of a new wave of black films arriving in American cinemas. “It should have happened a long time ago – but it’s finally happening now,” said Weinstein.
And Fruitvale Station has special poignancy being released in US cinemas on the same weekend as a Florida jury found neighbourhood watchman George Zimmerman not guilty in the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin last year.
Before the end of 2013 some ten movies made by black filmmakers – telling black stories – will be released by US studios and production companies – a very significant increase over the same period last year. These pictures include a broad range of films from historical dramas to musicals.
