SAN FRANCISCO, May 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- San Francisco Art
Exchange LLC (SFAE) is pleased and proud to announce that it has
been selected to exclusively represent the sale of the Separate
Cinema Archive: a comprehensive collection of such singular
unprecedented importance that there is no other remotely like it in
world. The archive is comprised of 35,000 items, including
rare vintage posters, lobby cards and photographs originating from
30 countries, that chronicles the historic and often turbulent
story of African-American cinema, from the beginning of the silent
era right on through to the present day.
Beginning with the gift of a single movie poster in 1972,
archive founder John Kisch, a
renowned photographer and author, made it his mission to weave the
narrative of the African-American film industry – black actors,
writers and directors – and over the next four decades he amassed a
collection that is a true one of a kind, representing the single
largest archive of black-related movie posters and photos anywhere
in the world.
The Separate Cinema Archive is a rich tableaux, epic in scale,
one that holds significant importance not only in cinema history,
but also for social, political and cultural historians as it tells
both the story of the black filmmaking industry of the 20th Century
as well as that of the global black experience. Each poster and
photograph brings forth a new chapter in the struggle for equality,
and with every movie depicted iconic heroes emerge – writers,
directors, actors and characters who fought against stereotyping
and marginalization from both Hollywood and society as a whole.
"History relies on evidence, and the Separate Cinema Archive
provides that," says Theron Kabrich,
who along with Jim Hartley founded
and serves as director of the SFAE. "This collection pays respect
to the contributions of the filmmakers and artists who literally
changed history through their work."
One of the first films represented in the Separate Cinema
Archive is D.W. Griffith's 1915
three-hour drama The Birth of a Nation. Although
revolutionary for its time for its editing and camera techniques,
the picture outraged many (including the NAACP) for its
glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its negative depiction of
blacks. Widespread protests against the picture failed to result in
a ban, but what emerged was the first generation of black
independent filmmakers who would seize the moment to tell the full
humanity of African Americans.
Starting just 50 years after the Civil War, there were
visionaries like Noble Johnson, who
with middle-class melodramas like The Realization of a
Negro's Ambition for his own Lincoln Motion Picture
Company launched the "race film" business, along with Oscar
Michaeux ("the first black film auteur"), who wrote, produced and
directed dozens of pictures, including 1931's The Exile, the
first all-black-cast independently produced talkie.
Other indelible figures advance the story: Josephine Baker, Dorothy
Dandridge, Lena Horn, and
Hattie McDaniel, who became the
first African-American to win an Academy Award (Best Supporting
Actress for Gone With the Wind). And, of course, there's
Sidney Poitier, whose significance
cannot be overstated. Becoming the first African-American to win
Best Actor (for 1963's Lilies of the Field), his
unprecedented string of 1960s civil rights-themed box-office
smashes – along with his own behind-the-scenes work for equality –
opened the floodgates for enterprising and ambitious black
filmmakers like Melvin Van Peebles
(Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song) and Gordon Parks (Shaft), who ushered in the
enormously popular – and controversial – era of blaxploitation.
There are music films (Wattstax, The Harder They
Come) and comedies (Blazing Saddles, Uptown Saturday
Night), dramas (Sounder, Nothing But a Man) and
documentaries (Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee),
and starting in the '80s the evolution gains serious speed with
groundbreaking works of directors such as Gordon Parks Jr., Charles Burnett, Darnell
Martin, Michael Schultz,
Spike Lee, John Singleton, Antoine
Fuqua, Kasi Lemmons,
F. Gary Gray, the Hughes Brothers,
Ava DuVernay and Steve McQueen. And with them came bankable black
stars – Denzel Washington,
Eddie Murphy, Halle Barry, Forest
Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey and
Whoopi Goldberg – whose box-office receipts rivaled that of their
white counterparts. The recent Oscar wins for films like 12
Years a Slave and Moonlight stand as living repudiations
of D.W. Griffith's shameful
plantation fantasy.
"It's important to note that the greatest stories in American
history take place in a country that was built on slavery and
involuntary servitude," says Kabrich. "A lot of people, certainly
in Hollywood, made a lot of money
based on the back of that history. You see that in rich detail
throughout the narrative of this collection in that it pays homage
to a significant part of the population that was involved with
entertainment and storytelling. And that part of the population was
either marginalized or forgotten completely, ridiculously."
Adds Hartley: "I had two reactions when I first saw the
collection. The first was how significant it is and the gravity
that it represents. It was so beautiful in ways I hadn't imagined.
And the other thought was how grateful and honored Theron and I
feel to be able to be the fiduciary custodians of it for a brief
time. We want to make sure that it receives its rightful home and
that people are able to witness it in the appropriate manner."
Parts of the archive have been featured as traveling exhibits at
film festivals, corporate galleries, and art institutions, but for
the first time the archive is available for sale as a complete
property.
The book "Separate Cinema: The First 100 Years of Black Poster
Art" poignantly illustrates the collection. Published by Reel
Art Press, the volume was released in 2014 to stellar reviews.
San Francisco Art Exchange is the sole gallery authorized to
sell the Separate Cinema Archive. Founded in 1983 by
Theron Kabrich and Jim Hartley, San Francisco Art Exchange LLC
(SFAE) has represented historic pop culture artworks created by
over 200 of the world's most accomplished and significant artists
and photographers. Recognized as market pioneers and premier
purveyors of original pop iconography, SFAE has held over 100 major
curated exhibitions highlighting music, film, cultural movements,
historic figures and social issues.
SFAE has sold original artwork of iconic album covers by the
Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, among many
others. The gallery has also concluded landmark sales of rare
photographs of Marilyn Monroe,
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Johnny Cash and Muhammad Ali, just to name a few.
In addition, SFAE has represented treasured music and
movie-related artifacts from private
and celebrity archives such as the Playboy Collection and
the Brown Derby Collection, among others.
At its downtown San Francisco
gallery, SFAE has hosted live events by everyone from music
superstars Brian Wilson and
Graham Nash to civil rights legend
Clarence Jones and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. The gallery's most recent
project was the sale of a rare portfolio of photographs of
President John F. Kennedy
celebrating the centennial of his birth in cooperation with the
Kennedy Foundation, with a percentage of the proceeds benefitting
the foundation.
For more information:
http://www.sfae.com/
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SOURCE San Francisco Art Exchange