{"id":49210,"date":"2016-09-25T21:44:33","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T21:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49210"},"modified":"2016-09-25T21:44:33","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T21:44:33","slug":"this-movie-was-nearly-lost-now-theyre-fighting-to-save-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49210","title":{"rendered":"This Movie Was Nearly Lost. Now They\u2019re Fighting to Save It."},"content":{"rendered":"

This Movie Was Nearly Lost. Now They\u2019re Fighting to Save It.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2016-09-23<\/p>\n

John Anderson<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nRichard Romain<\/a> in the 1982 film \u201cCane River<\/a>.\u201d
\nCredit IndieCollect<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

When it debuted in 1982, \u201cCane River<\/a>\u201d was already a rarity: a drama by an independent black filmmaker, financed by wealthy black patrons and dealing with race issues untouched by mainstream cinema. Richard Pryor<\/a> had even tried to take it to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But since a negative resurfaced two years ago, it has attained a certain mythic quality, connecting a disparate group of people across the country: New York<\/a> preservationists dedicated to restoring it; a cultural historian in Louisiana<\/a> devoting an academic paper to it; an archivist in Los Angeles<\/a> fascinated with it. And the director\u2019s son, the music journalist and filmmaker Sacha Jenkins<\/a>, who knew about the film but has never seen it, and who has been left with a question no small number of sons have asked about their fathers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho was this guy?\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Cane River<\/a> itself is a historically multicultural area in Natchitoches Parish<\/a> in Louisiana, and the movie, in addition to being a Romeo-Juliet<\/a> romance, deals with land swindles perpetrated against people of color, and \u201ccolorism<\/a>\u201d\u2014 that is, social hierarchy as dictated by skin tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a common issue, because there was a lot of intermarriage and, of course, slavery,\u201d said Carol Balthazar, who was Horace Jenkins\u2019s partner, and whose family history provided the movie\u2019s historical backdrop…<\/p>\n

…Ms. Spann watched a bootleg DVD of \u201cCane River.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t think of any film that dealt with colorism in such a serious way,\u201d she said. She is writing a paper on \u201cCane River\u201d for the Louisiana Historical Society, and said some of the scenes seemed too long. Debra I. Moore, who edited the film in 1980, said there\u2019s a good reason for that…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This Movie Was Nearly Lost. Now They\u2019re Fighting to Save It. The New York Times 2016-09-23 John Anderson Richard Romain in the 1982 film \u201cCane River.\u201d Credit IndieCollect When it debuted in 1982, \u201cCane River\u201d was already a rarity: a drama by an independent black filmmaker, financed by wealthy black patrons and dealing with race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,8413,459,369,8,10],"tags":[25041,25042,240,25040,10376,2640,25039,25043,2327],"class_list":["post-49210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-communications","category-history","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-cane-river","tag-carol-balthazar","tag-colorism","tag-horace-jenkins","tag-john-anderson","tag-new-york-times","tag-richard-romain","tag-sacha-jenkins","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49211,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49210\/revisions\/49211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}