When a Light in Your Life Goes Out
a tribute to the eternal presence of St. Clair Bourne
2007-12-20
By Floyd Webb
Continued
Arising out of the ashes of countless rebellions for social justice and economic parity, and answering the call for information centered around the needs of the black community, Black Journal was one of the first black news programs broadcast nationally on PBS starting in 1968. St. Clair left Black Journal in 1971 to start his production company, Chamba Productions.
In 1972, in the midst of his production activities St. Clair began publishing the highly regarded newsletter, Chamba Notes to promote discussion of political and cultural issues along with the art of filmmaking. St. Clair was very concerned with the "black aesthetic," as I would expect from someone with his background. This is a concern so many of us continue to share and to discuss and too many see these concerns as "anachronisms," outdated viewpoints of the "old guard." For St. Clair, being a "black" filmmaker was a title of pride. To deny it was to discount the rich historical and cultural vibrancy of a whole nation.
Out of the 50s we came with a determination that a change was definitely going to come. The 1960s was the time for new and bolder forms of expression. After World War II and Korea, black folks were stepping up, led by the likes of Charlie Parker with his horn; Robert Williams with his NAACP chapter's armed resistance to the Klan. Poet Leroi Jones became Amiri Baraka
St Clair came onto the scene following the work of Chicago filmmaker Edward O. Bland and the seminal works of other filmmakers like William Greaves and Melvin Van Peebles.
Jacquie Jones on the allegiance of this pivotal filmmaker to
community and the work. Click Here to read more.
I first heard of his film, Let The Church Say Amen, when it was screened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976 by Joan Cohen in one of the first retrospectives of Black Film.
For the life of me I cannot remember when we first met, I remember the first time we ever spent a lot of time hanging out was in 1979 at the First (and only) conference of black filmmakers, presented by the then newly formed Black Filmmaker Foundation (BFF), headed by Warrington Hudlin. 1979 was also the year that Charles Burnett's film, The Horse, won his first award at the Berlin Film Festival. The stage was being set by a new generation of aware, committed filmmakers.
This first conference brought together about 25 filmmakers from around the country to screen their works and surprisingly, several filmmakers flew in from Senegal. The filmmakers present included Julie Dash, Barbara McCullough, Charles Lane, Ayoka Chenzira, Doug Harris, Alile Sharon Larkin, Roy Campenella Jr, the late Randy Abbot, Seck Ngaydo Ba, Ben Caldwell and Kathy Collins, Pearl Bowser and many others. I seem to remember it being bumrushed by a very young Spike Lee who screened his hilarious short film, The Answer. We spent about 5 days at New York University, in central Manhattan looking at all of the filmmakers work and discussing it. Being a rube from Chicago I got took for $20 on a sure thing 3 card Monty game on 42nd street, I embarrassingly admit. Good thing I left my razor home that day.
Being from Chicago and being a fan of the blues and having a bit of that anachronistic 1960s black nationalist fervor was enough to get us to talking. I did not know much about New York: I was there to shoot stills for the BFF. St. Clair and I shared a lot of similar histories due to our activist backgrounds, a stint in ROTC and living and working abroad. I met the man before I met the legend.
I became a frequent visitor to his 105th Street apartment following this conference. I was in and out of the country a lot and I kept him up on black film info from abroad for Chamba Notes when I could. After participating in the first Black Film Festival in London curated by Parmindar Vir at the Commonwealth Institute I got festival fever and helped organize one in Chicago in 1981, then founded the Blacklight Film Festival with the help of New York Film Festival director Richard Pena, (then at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute) and Brenda Webb at Chicago Filmmakers.
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