Michael T. Martin

Biography

Founder & Editor-in-Chief: Black Camera, An International Film Journal (Indiana University Press)

Founder & Editor-in-Chief: Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora–book series (Indiana University Press)

Books [collections]

• [w/David C. Wall] From Street to Screen: Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep. Indiana University Press, 2020.
• The Birth of a Nation: The Cinematic Past in the Present. Indiana University Press, 2019
• [w/ David C. Wall and Marilyn Yaquinto] Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Indiana University Press, 2018
• [w/ David C. Wall] The Politics and Poetics of Black Film: Nothing But a Man. Indiana University Press, 2015
• [w/ Marilyn Yaquinto] Redress for Historical Injustices in the United States: On Reparations for Slavery, Jim Crow, and Their Legacies. Duke University Press, 2007
• New Latin American Cinema: Wayne State University Press, 1995
  • vol. 1 Theory, Practices, and Transcontinental Articulations
  • vol. 2 Studies of National Cinemas
• Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence and Oppositionality. Wayne State University Press, 1995
• [w/ Terry Kandal] Studies of Development and Change in the Modern World. Oxford University Press, 1989

Journal/Book Chapters (select and recent)

• “On ‘Mediated Solidarity’: Reading Ousmane Sembene in Sembene!,” Black Camera, vol. 12, no. 2 (Spring) 2021: 485-522
• “The Land Beneath Our Feet: ‘The Enduring Legacy of the Past in the Present,'” Africa Today, vol. 67, no. 1, 2020: 73-94
• “The Long Take: Gaston Kabore on the Formation, Evolution & Challenges to FEPACI & FESPACO,” Black Camera, vol. 12, no. 1, (Fall) 2020: 209-236
• “Founding Myths and Storytelling: The African Modern,” Black Camera, vol. 12, no. 1, 2020: 601-04
• “Boots Riley on Sorry to Bother You and the Matter of the ‘Good Fight'”, Black Camera, vol. 11, no. 2, 2020: 176-215
• “The Practice of Curating the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive: A Conversation with the Founding Director,” Black Camera, vol. 11, no. 1, 2019: 40-61
• (w/N. Griffis) “Black Women Becoming Whole: Bridgett M. Davis on Naked Acts, Black Camera, vol. 11, no. 2, 2019: 13-39
• “Close-up: On the Colony’s Postcolony Encounter in Claire Denis’s Chocolat and White Material,” Black Camera, vol. 10, no. 1, 2018: 96-98, 99-122, 144-155
• (w/Y. Kamara) “On the Commerce of Intimacy: Dany Laferriere on How to Make Love to a Negro…and Heading South,” Black Camera, vol. 9, no. 1, 2017: 80-105
• “Nelson Pereira dos Santos on ‘Who is Beta?’ and Such Other Dauntingly Brazilian Maladies,” Black Camera, vol. 7, no. 2 (Spring) 2016: 11-36
• “Struggles for the sign in the Black Atlantic: Los Angeles Collective of Black Filmmakers,” L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema, Allyson Nadia Field, Jan-Christopher Horak, and Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, eds. University of California Press, 2015: 196-224
• (w/ M. Moorman) “The Civilizing Mission of Globalization: Technology, African Cinematic Practice, and Overcoming Neocolonialism–A Conversation with Filmmaker Jean-Marie Teno,” Third Text, vol. 29, nos. 1-2, 2015: 61-74
• “‘I just Wanted My Figures to Move’: The Filmmaking Practice of Mike Henderson,” Black Camera, vol. 7, no. 1, 2015: 60-90
• “Conversations with Ava DuVernay–‘A Call to Action’: Organizing Principles of an Activist Cinematic Practice,” Black Camera, vol. 6, no. 1, 2014: 57-91
• [w/ D. Wall] “Race, Space, and Gender in Ed Bland’s Cry of Jazz,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 31, no. 2, 2014: 136-147
• [w/ D. Wall] “The Politics of Cine-Memory: Signifying Slavery in the History Film,” The Blackwell Companion to Historical Film, Robert Rosenstone and C. Parvulescu, eds. Wiley-Blackwell, 2013: 445-467
• “Documenting Modern Day Slavery in the Dominican Republic: An Interview with Amy Serrano,” Camera Obscura, vol. 25, no. 2, 2010: 161-172
• “‘I Do Exist’: From ‘Black Insurgent’ to Negotiating the Hollywood Divide–A Conversation with Julie Dash,” Cinema Journal, vol. 49, no. 2, 2010: 1-16
• “‘Buses are a Comin’. Oh Yeah!’: Stanley Nelson on Freedom Riders,” Black Camera, vol. 3, no. 1, 2011: 96-122
• “‘I Make Documentaries to Give Voice to the Voiceless’: The Filmmaking Practice of Yoruba Richen,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, vol. 28, no. 3, 2011: 183-194
• “‘Podium for the Truth’? Reading Slavery and the Neocolonial Project in the Historical Film: Queimada! and Sankofa in Counterpoint,” Third Text, vol. 23, no. 6, 2009: 717-731
• “Joseph Gai Ramaka: ‘I am not a filmmaker engage. I am an ordinary citizen engage,” Research in African Literatures, vol. 40, no. 3, 2009: 206-219

Documentary Production

• In the Absence of Peace [Martin/Shepard Production; written and directed by Michael T. Martin; award winning video documentary in Spanish and English, 54:00, color. Distributed by THIRD WORLD NEWSREEL: twn@twn.org

Interviews

• “Who Gets to Tell Our Stories? Charles Burnett and the Responsibility of the Artist,” Interchange, WFHB community radio, March 13, 2018