Italian Mannerist Painting

The period after the High Renaissance is known as Mannerism, this style occurred in the early to mid-16th century.  Mannerism can be identified by several features: elongated bodies, contorted poses and also by tumultuous compositions which lack a central focus.  Mannerism can also be associated with unnaturally bright colors which are often bold pastels or colors such as acid yellow, chartreuse, magenta, bright pink, baby blue and sea foam green.

 Descent from the Cross, Rosso Fiorentino, 1521

Let's start with Fiorentino's Descent from the Cross which was an early example of the mannerist style.  The fact that the artist has so many figures crowded in the space and swirling around the edges of the composition takes away from what should be a powerfully moving subject.  Instead is is hard not to focus on the fact that everything looks out of proportion and rather unworldly.

Descent from the Cross, Jacopo Pontormo, 1526-28

The sense of other worldliness is heightened in the Florentine painter Pontormo's version of the same subject which still hangs today in Santa Felicita in Florence.  This is a large work (313 × 192 cm/ 123.2 × 75.6 in) the bright nearly acidic pastels that Pontormo used seem to glow.  Pontormo's intense colors and swirling floating figures are so different from other devotional works, there is a great sense of emotional despair in this painting which seems to resonate with viewers.

The Libyan Sybil, Sistine Chapel Ceiling, Michelangelo

One of the largest influences on Mannerism was Michelangelo.  Central Italian painters were borrowing his ideas, however not necessarily the ideas that make the strongest composition or painting.  As we can see from one of Michelangelo's figures on the Sistine chapel ceiling he did use some bright colors and sometimes posed figures in a rather unnatural way.

However Michelangelo constantly worked from figures models and life drawing and this wasn't always the case with the various painters who were working in the mannerist style.

Madonna with the Long Neck, Parmigianino, 1534-40

I have written many blog posts about art that I love, honestly this may be the first post I am writing about art that in general I truly dislike.  In fact I recently described Italian Mannerism as "the visual equivalent to nails on a chalkboard," but I still feel it is important to write about as it came directly after the High Renaissance and directly influenced Italian Baroque painting. 

The painter known as Parmigianino painted many other works, his portraits were quite realistic, but today his most famous painting is a work which has come to be known as the Madonna with the Long Neck.  I have seen this in person in the Uffizi gallery in Florence and it is quite jarring.  Mary's neck is disproportionately long as are her fingers and her head is disproportionately small.  The body of the infant Christ looks like he would be as tall as a much older child.  What is going on in this work is not clear, and perhaps the most puzzling part for me is the presence of a tiny man in the bottom right corner.  Is he meant to be in the far distance?  Or instead is he meant to be a symbol for something and if so for what?  This may be one of my least favorite paintings and I find it a huge step stylistically backward from the High Renaissance.  However upon seeing Parmigianino's portraiture it is obvious that he could paint in a naturalistic style and was choosing to paint in such an oddly unrealistic way.

Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, Bronzino

San Lorenzo, Florence, 1569

Another trademark of this style is using figures to fill in every conceivable spot in a composition, a term art historians have come to call horror vacui.  Literally it means the fear of empty space and Bronzino's fresco of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence is a perfect example of this idea.  There are so many figures and so many simultaneous events going on that the work loses both its impact on the viewer and its ability to tell a clear story.

While I don't personally care for this style, at the time mannerism was considered very elegant and refined.  It looks as if Bronzino was trying to emulate Michelangelo's use of many nude figures in his Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel in the above work.

Pisa attacked by Florence, Giorgio Vasari, 1555-72

detail of larger fresco from the Sala di Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio

The hallmarks of horror vacui, unnatural colors and contorted poses can also be found in the paintings of Renaissance man Giorgio Vasari.  Vasari wrote the series of books- The Lives of the Artists as well as created hundreds of paintings and designed many architectural works.  He truly considered Michelangelo the greatest artist to have lived and modeled his own works in his style.  However due to the above mentioned characteristics of Vasari's painting style he didn't create any particularly groundbreaking works or develop a strong style of his own.  His fresco cycle in the Sala di Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence contains so many hundreds of swirling figures that his compositions read as a jumbled mess of people lacking a clear narrative.

If perhaps one factor contributing to this style was the work of the High Renaissance painters, another may be that it came into favor as the Republic of Florence was ending and the Medici Duchy in Florence was beginning.  Gone were the days when the major guilds of Florence held competitions and various artists were breaking new ground artistically.  Now that the Medici court were the definitive rulers of the Florentines artists were conforming to the unusual new style of Mannerism.

Cimabue, Giotto and Duccio- A comparison of three Madonnas

The 13th and 14th centuries in Italy are known by a variety of different names in art history.  This period in Italy is when artists and scholars break from Medieval thought, philosophy and representations in art and begin to embrace the ideas of Humanism.  Some scholars refer to this as the Italian Gothic or "Italo-Byzantine" style.  Others refer to it as the early Renaissance or "Proto-Renaissance" in art. 

The 16th century art historian Giorgio Vasari coined the terms Trecento, Quattrocento and Cinquecento to describe the 1300's, 1400's and 1500's.*  I find myself using those terms as they refer to the time period rather than the style, calling this period the Trecento, though in the case of Cimabue, Duecento would be the more accurate term.

Virgin Enthroned with Angels, Cimabue, c-1290-95, Louvre

14' x 9' (4.27 m x 2.8 m)

Cimabue was the nickname of painter Cenni di Peppi and meant "ox-head" alternate accounts refer to either his stubbornness or homeliness.  However, aside from that nickname Cimabue was well renowned and highly sought after as a painter.  Born in Florence in 1240 he painted several monumental crucifix panels as well as church altarpieces with the Virgin and Child.

As the Louvre website states:
"Cimabue led the artistic movement in late 12th-century Tuscany that sought to renew the pictorial vocabulary and break with the rigidity of Byzantine art. The artist demonstrated a new sensibility, which endeavored to adhere more closely to reality."1

At first glance Cimabue's Madonna and angels do look rather stylized and abstracted, the faces are all similar and elongated, the angels hover weightlessly stacked on top of one another.  However in comparison with Byzantine models his figures are more filled out and have realistic folds in their drapery.  Their is an expressive and inquisitive look in each face of Cimabue's work.  Byzantine icons are beautiful works of art, but were created for spiritual reasons and were never meant to reflect naturalism.

While Giorgio Vasari considered Cimabue to have started the Italian Renaissance, later art historian Frederick Hartt in his book History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture felt that Cimabue was instead the last artist of the Byzantine tradition.

The Ognissanti Madonna, Giotto, 1306-10, Uffizi

 10.7" x 6.7" (3.25 m x 2.04 m)

The pictorial inventions of Giotto can be seen in his altarpiece created for the church of Ognissanti in Florence.  Known as The Ognissanti Madonna (shown above), Giotto's figures have a solidity and weight to them.  Faces are quite expressive and individualized rather than stylized, the throne is shown as a realistic three dimensional space and the angels are shown convincingly in front of one another rather than stacked on top of each other.  Many art historians consider Giotto the father of the Italian Renaissance.  His innovations in art are especially evident in his many fresco cycles where he clearly captures the emotions in each individual.

After his time stylized iconographic figures and altarpieces start to wane from Italian art.

Maestà (Virgin in Magesty), Duccio, 1308

Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Siena

7' x 13.5' (2.13 m x 4.12 m)

Unlike Cimabue and Giotto who were Florentine, Duccio was a prominent painter from Siena.  Sienese painting was similar to the art of the art of Florence even though the two cities had a bitter rivalry.  Part of the rivalry was due to the political divide between the Guelphs who supported the Roman pope (Florence) and the Ghibellines who supported the Holy Roman Empire (Siena). Due to the ties with the Holy Roman Empire along with ties to the French papacy in Avignon, the Sienese had more artistic influenced which were derived from the International Gothic style found in Germany and France.  This can be seen in the poses and folds of drapery in his figures.  But Duccio like Giotto is painting in a way that captures the intelligence and personality of each saint and angel.

The front of the Maestà depicts the Madonna and Child enthroned with saints and angels (Maestà means the Virgin Mary in majesty), while on the reverse were nearly fifty scenes of the life of Christ.

As Keith Christiansen wrote in his article on Duccio and the Origins of Western Painting:
 
"Departing from the Byzantine notion of painting as a symbolic image of a divine being, Duccio, the founder of Sienese painting, endowed his figures with a new humanity, exploring the psychological relationship between Mother and Child."2

Cimabue, Giotto and Duccio are all in fact exploring the psychology of the figures they are painting and whatever one chooses to call this period in art, it is now evident that the ideas of Renaissance Humanism are taking hold in society.


*pronounced: "tray-chento," "kwatro-chento," and "cheen-quay-chento"

1 Louvre website- http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/madonna-and-child-majesty-surrounded-angels
2 "Duccio di Buoninsegna: Madonna and Child (2004.442)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2004.442 (September 2010)   

Sculpture from the Cappella di San Severo

The Cappella di San Severo in Naples is today a small museum that was originally founded as a funerary chapel in the late 16th century for the noble di Sangro family, princes of Sansevero. Raimondo di Sangro, the seventh Prince of Sansevero (1710-71) was a generous patron of the arts and commissioned most of the incredible sculpture that has made the chapel famous.  I was fortunate enough to visit Naples this past April and see these fantastic works of art in person.  While the chapel had been around since the 1500's, the sculpture created in the mid-1700's is what the Cappella di San Severo is famous for today.

As Donald Posner wrote in the book 17th and 18th Century Art:

"The ideals of the eighteenth century brought about significant changes in Italian sculpture.  The baroque style was gradually transformed into a version of the Rococo as sculptors tended to stress elegance, lightness, and wit in their work." 1

Christo Velato, Giuseppe Sanmartino, 1753

This statement is found to be true when visiting this chapel. Raimondo di Sangro commissioned the renowned Venetian sculptor Antonio Corradini to carve a veiled Christ in marble as well as other sculptures to add to the chapel.  The internationally known Corradini had been working in Germany and Austria and came to Naples in 1750 to work on this project.  However the artist died in 1752 after creating his sculpture Modesty.  Modesty, which was also a veiled figure, was a tribute to Raimondo's mother Cecilia Gaetani.

When Corradini died before sculpting the Christo Velato (the figure of the veiled Christ after the Crucifixion) Giuseppe Sanmartino was commissioned in his place to create this work.  Sanmartino was a young Neapolitan sculptor with less experience but who had a strong vision of what Christ should look like.

Sanmartino's sculpture is very strong in it's workmanship, a single block of alabaster carved to realistically convey the dead body of Christ as seen through a thin piece of fabric.  Through the cloth Christ's wounds, muscles and even veins can be seen.  As I walked around the work I found that the figure looked different from every angle.  I couldn't help but wonder what the artist used as a model as he carved this as it is so incredibly lifelike.

Disillusion, Francesco Queirolo, 1753-54

When I saw this in person I found this to be a very moving work of art.  I was surprised that until I visited the museum in Naples I hadn't heard of this sculpture and that it wasn't more widely known.  I found both the Christo Velato and Francesco Queirolo's Disillusion (seen above) to be some of the most original and well executed sculpture I have seen.

Francesco Queirolo's Disillusion was dedicated to Raimondo's father Antonio, the Duke of Torremaggiore.  The sculptor Queirolo, who was originally from Genoa, has created an unbelievably complex composition.  Out of one block of marble the artist convincingly created a figure emerging from a net with two very different textures; human flesh and the rope of the net.

The small winged figure is an allegory of Intellect helping the figure of Humanity to shed the Net of Disillusion.  Again, in person this sculpture makes a very powerful impact.

As the Museum website says of the chapel and Raimondo di Sangro's influence:

"Each individual work, in fact, had to play a unique role in the overall iconographic design that he had conceived, and which the artists themselves were probably unaware of. It is for this reason that in the Sansevero Chapel, more than in any other complex, there is the sense of patronage which, sometimes overwhelming the individual artistic presence, dominates and gives off energy, coherence, a sense of awe, and lends a European air to the whole complex." 2

1 Held, Julius S. and Donald Posner. 17th and 18th Century Art: Baroque Painting, Sculpture, Architecture. New York: Prentice-Hall Inc., and Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1972) p. 355.

2 http://www.museosansevero.it/inglese/cappellasansevero/cappella/fastosettecento.html

Van Gogh's The Starry Night

"In the blue depths the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparklingly gemlike than at home - even in Paris."1

So wrote Vincent Van Gogh while he was in Saint-Rémy during the time when he painted his famous painting, The Starry Night.  Van Gogh created this painting, one of his most famous works of art and a favorite of mine, in June of 1889 about a month after he moved to the mental asylum in the small town of Saint-Rémy outside of Arles where he had been living.

While Van Gogh was at the asylum he painted constantly, taking his inspiration from the views out of his window and the countryside around him.  Just six months earlier he had a mental breakdown in Arles and mutilated his own ear, which was followed by a lengthy stay at a hospital. 
His time in the asylum at Saint-Rémy was an especially prolific time in his painting career and The Starry Night was influenced by the night sky as seen from his window there.

The Starry Night, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, 29 x 36 1/4" (73.7 x 92.1 cm)

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York

Art Historian Robert Rosenblum wrote of Van Gogh:

"Of the many marvels that make up Van Gogh's genius, one is his uncanny capacity to project his total visual and emotional attention into anything he painted, animate or inanimate, so that a shoe, a sunflower, a chair, a book could carry as much weight as the image of a human being."2

This statement is also true of his landscapes.  Van Gogh's night sky does seem to vibrate and swirl with its own personality and the vivid hues of the stars, sky, moon and cypresses have a near anthropomorphic quality lacking in the landscapes of the French Impressionists whose work influenced his style.

While such painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley were interested in capturing the color and light in a landscape, Van Gogh filled his with emotional and symbolic meaning. 

In the town (which is imagined) the only building to rise above everything is the church with its steeple touching the sky.  That same form is echoed in the foreground with the shape of the cypress trees also touching the heavens.

Van Gogh trained as a preacher and spent time working in that profession in the Netherlands before he took up painting.  Is the church in this painting and the fact that the steeple rises over the hills symbolic?

 The Starry Night, pen and ink drawing, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, 18.5 x 24.5"

Museum of Architecture, Moscow

Van Gogh loved to draw also and frequently sketched out drawings first of works he would later paint in oils.  The pen and ink drawing Van Gogh did of this painting is strikingly similar, however he did make a few alterations in his final painted work.  The moon is smaller in the painting and tilted at a slightly different angle.  The cypress is darker and the smoke which rises from chimneys in the drawing to connect the town with the sky is gone.  

Yet he managed to create the same feeling of vibrant swirling movement in his drawing and creates a work of art which is far from the quiet and serene landscape one would imagine when picturing a starry night in a small rural town.

A Wheatfield with Cypresses, Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

The National Gallery (London)

This landscape painting with cypresses was also painted while Van Gogh was at Saint-Rémy a few months after The Starry Night and done in September.  Van Gogh actually painted three very similar versions of this painting.  The composition seems to be a mirror image of The Starry Night, done in the daylight with the cypress trees framing the scene, rolling hills in the background and whirling clouds replacing the nighttime stars.

 La nuit étoilée (The Starry Night), Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

While Van Gogh's The Starry Night is a unique style of landscape painting, he included the night sky in a few of his other works.  One example is his earlier version of a starry night (shown above) painted in September 1888 while he was living in Arles.  Here he portrays the city as seen from the Rhône river and the brightest lights are those which are reflected in the water rather than the stars.

Vincent Van Gogh was known to have painted outside with candles placed in his hat so that he could see to work at night.  In a letter to his sister during the same month that he painted this view of the Rhône at night, Vincent wrote:

"Often it seems to me night is even more richly coloured than day."3

Never does this statement seems to be more true then when viewing Van Gogh's nighttime landscape paintings. 

1 Feaver, William. Van Gogh, The Masterworks. New York: Portland House. (1990) p. 41. 
2 Rosenblum, Robert and H.W. Janson. 19th-Century Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (1984) p. 414.
3 Quote taken from the Musée d'Orsay website on the page for La nuit étoilée.

The Frescoes of Akrotiri

The Ancient city of Akrotiri on the Greek Island of Santorini (then known as Thera) can be likened to a much earlier version of Pompeii.  This Minoan city was buried in an enormous volcanic eruption that occurred on the island sometime between 1,800 and 1,500 BC.

There are a lot of unknowns about this Bronze Age civilization which was named Minoan by later historians after the mythical King Minos of Crete.  The largest Minoan settlement was found on Crete in the city of Knossos.  The earliest form of their language (known as Linear A) has not been deciphered and timelines of events are approximated.  We aren't certain what the Minoans actually called their own civilization or what their religious beliefs were.  Was there any truth to the myth of King Minos from Crete?  The later form of language (known as Linear B) has been deciphered but 99% of it was used in taking inventory of goods or for administrative purposes which doesn't tell historians much about the overall history of this fascinating civilization.


However Minoan art, including these frescoes from Akrotiri, helps to shed some light on this society that thrived in the Aegean four thousand years ago.

The Springtime Fresco, from Room Delta 2,Complex D
Akrotiri, c-1,500 BC

National Archeological Museum of Athens

The Springtime fresco is the earliest work which is entirely a landscape painting that has been found in the ancient world.  This fresco covered at least three walls in the room it was found in.  As we can see the imagery is stylized and abstracted rather than being a more naturalistic representation of hills and flowers.  The landscape is painted as colorful, bright and expressive with a playful inclusion of swooping birds.  It is not known what the room that this decorated was used for or why they chose to fill the walls with landscape painting.

Minoan painting can be differentiated from the arts found in other bronze age civilizations such as Egyptian and Mesopotamian due to the subject matter.  Most Minoan fresco subjects were scenes from daily life rather than paintings created to honor Pharaohs or gods. Also the Minoans used the true wet fresco technique of painting with pigment into plaster made with limestone to seal the painting to the wall, rather than the dry fresco technique used in Egypt.

However there were also some similarities, the two frescoes below show how the Minoans also used the same "twisted perspective" seen in figurative art through the centuries in ancient civilizations.  We can find examples of this in Mesopotamian relief carving as well as Egyptian fresco.  Twisted perspective refers to the fact that the feet and legs are shown in profile, but the torso is shown frontally.  The head is also in profile, while the eye is shown frontally.

Boxing Boys Fresco, Room B1, Building B
Akrotiri, c-2,000-1,800 BC

Young Fisherman Fresco, 
Room 5,                                                        

West House, Akrotiri, c-1,500 BC 

National Archeological Museum of Athens

The above two figurative frescos are also good depictions of daily activities that were common in Akrotiri.  Apparently Minoans shaved their head but for some long locks, the shaved head is shown as blue and the long locks as black. Another similarity to Egyptian art is how men were depicted as having darker tan skin and women were shown having pale skin.

As the Minoan civilization was centered on the Aegean islands there is a wealth of marine life imagery shown in their art, such as the fish in the Young Fisherman Fresco and the swimming dolphins shown below in the Flotilla Fresco.  Vases were painted with octopi and on the main island of Crete there were fish and dolphins painted in the Palace of Knossos. 

The Flotilla Fresco, from one wall in Room 5, West House,
Akrotiri, c-1,500 BC

National Archeological Museum of Athens

The enormous fresco known as The Flotilla Fresco from room 5 of the West House gives the modern viewer a more detailed look at daily life in this culture.  This fresco wrapped around three sides of a room, it is approximately 39 feet (12 m) long and yet only 17 inches high (43 cm) in a frieze like style.  

Ships are shown sailing from one island to the next while people wait for them in the towns, deer are chased in the hills and dolphins swim in the sea.  Is this too a panoramic scene of daily life?  Or instead the retelling of a historic even or mythic story?

Detail of The Flotilla Fresco, from Room 5,
West House, Akrotiri, c-1,500 BC

What seems apparent from this fresco, the ruins at Akrotiri and some small faience plaques found at the site is that the Minoans were building multilevel residential structures complete with exterior windows.  These dwellings were quite sophisticated and architecture such as this wasn't found elsewhere in the Bronze Age.

These are just a small sampling of the many remains of Minoan frescoes, due to the volcanic eruption at Akrotiri this site has kept a high concentration of these paintings intact.

Suggested reading for more information on the Minoan civilization

The Aegean Bronze Age. Oliver Dickinson. Camridge University Press: Cambridge, 1994.

The Arts in Prehistoric Greece. Sinclair Hood. Penguin Books: London, 1978.

An Effective Video Editing Work Flow

Perhaps you are one of those individuals who consider the thought of editing a video a little frightening especially if you haven't ever done this up to now. The fundamental principles of video editing are simple and this article should help ensure that you can have a completed project that you are able to share.

You probably are looking at the difficulties which you may face for instance, how to move the video files across to the video editor, how to isolate the pieces that you want and where to put them or how you will generate a final video which might be watched by others?

Each of these are issues you would undoubtedly be wondering about if you had never done this before. If you have taken your video files off of your device and across to your laptop or desktop then you are fundamentally off to a start.

First you should get your video files into the video software program library. At this time it's a good option to ensure they are clearly labeled and arranged to help you find them effectively at a later date.

The application library is the place you can build simple sequences of video. This can be done by building the segments gradually until you have the complete product.

All you need to do after that is to output the whole lot as a new video file and you are finished.

All of this may seem somewhat overwhelming but that is ultimately how it is performed and you will be pleased at how uncomplicated modern video editing software makes it.

To view all this occurring you must have the preview display available. This is one of two windows which are typically accessible when you open the program. The preview display is often times over on the left area of your computer screen.

The significance of the preview pane is that it enables you to truly observe the video clips that you are working with at that moment so that it is simple to decide upon what has to be done. After you have made a decision you may then correct anything you need to.

Simply put, that's the place where you focus on the approximate intentions before you make your final production.

After you have the individual scenes in the state you require then you can insert them onto the timeline. The timeline is frequently down below the preview panel and is where you can arrange your finalized production into a full movie.

The time line is also used for scene transitions as well as assorted filters.

With regards to right side of the display you will notice a window that points to the library. This window allows swift visible entry to items like your current video, image and audio files. It is from that window that one is ready to drag elements onto the time line.

Primarily you achieve all your editing on the time line. When you have located the various clips you can subsequently simply situate them any place on the time line. In this way it is easy to ensure your video plays back the way you really want.

It may seem that piling all of your resources on to the time line before you begin editing is the approach to take, but it is actually best to trim as well as adjust the video clips before getting to that phase.

Get your whole collection of clipped video clips onto the time line for starters and insert any transitions you desire to use in between any of the clips. At this time you should also insert any intro sequence such as movie titles plus an ending segment.

The final phase is generally fine-tuning and tweaking the audio track of the project. This is conducted last mainly because editing and trimming clips can throw the audio off. By performing this right at the end you can keep control of the way you want the audio to play and have uniformity throughout.

Once you have finished the video you may then decide how you want it to be seen by choosing the video file type.

Most video editing programs will give you a choice of video file types dependent upon just how you would like the video to get distributed and these are super easy to choose from inside the computer program. All that's left to do is decide on the location and render it to your laptop or computer much like you would any other sort of file.

Hollywood on Producing Black Films

The political and economical reality according to filmmaker George Lucas

African American filmmakers and other prominent figures should establish a distribution system to market black films across the globe. Hollywood admits that even with an Academy Award winning name like Cuba Gooding Jr. they still don't know how to market black films, according to filmmaker George Lucas, director of "Star Wars". In a recent interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, Lucas appeared as a guest promoting his new film "Red Tail", a story about the African American World War II heroes, the Tuskegee Airmen. With an all African American cast starring Cuba Gooding Jr. with R&B singer and song writer Neo, this is a Lucas film 23 years in the making and personally financed. Lucas laid out the political and economical views of the Hollywood Movie system in regards to the production and distribution of black films. He stated that he wanted to make an inspirational film for teenage boys and highlight the African American patriots that helped to make this country what it is today.

The troubling part of this interview was Lucas's story about getting the film distributed. He admits that all of the studios turned it down and expressed views that they didn't know how to market a film like this (Red Tail) because it had no 'green' in it. What did they mean by this? That there is no money in it or the fact that there were no major lead roles with white actors and therefore that no real money can be made? Lucas stated that the studios even refused to release Tyler Perry movies and referred to them as being' low budget films handled by a lower level distribution system'. He said that films like Perry's actually do pretty well but the major studios don't touch them. He said "Red Tail" actually cost him more money to make than what a Perry film earns in box office revenues. The studios believe there's no foreign market for it and that relates to 60% of their profit. Lucas said that "Red Tail" is one of the first all black action pictures ever made. This is incorrect because there are many all black action pictures that have been produced, especially some of the black exploitation films of the 1970s that starred black actors, however Hollywood just didn't embrace them. There are many that exist today that just don't make it to the big screen.

In the interview, Jon Stewart jokingly asked Lucas "Now, the scene in it when Hitler tells Cuba Gooding Jr. that he's his father?". The audience burst into laughter. Well, what are you actually saying Jon? Maybe lines like this are the real reason Hollywood don't know how to market black films. George Lucas said of the Tuskegee Airmen, "They are the true heroes of World War II" and also expressed that those who are still alive showed great emotion, came up to him with tears in their eyes, thanking him for making a film that finally recognized them.

The reality of telling our stories with integrity and depth and getting them to market is falling on the shoulders of the independent filmmakers producing them. Most black filmmakers go into debt and bankruptcy because they believe that their stories have substance, a great purpose and markets waiting to embrace them, even when Hollywood fails them. Black business owners have a responsibility, and should not only take from the consumer but give back, which most of them do. Black businesses should start supporting, sponsoring and financing African American films like never before. They will make a great contribution towards educating African Americans as well as many other ethnic groups who are clueless to the depths of the real African American experience.

I believe that there is a foreign market for African American films and those in Hollywood are just not interested in telling those stories. You know what? That's OK because the stories they do decide to tell, they seem to tell upside down anyway. If there were no foreign market for black films then why did Viacom spend 3 Billion dollars to acquire (BET) Black Entertainment Television Holdings in 2001? At the time of the BET purchase, the programming was airing in approximately 62 million African American households and watched across 14 countries. Somebody is tuning into the black experience via television. Why would EMI Publishing pay former Motown founder Berry Gordy 132 million dollars for rights to those (Motown/Jobete publishing) oldies that did extremely well in foreign countries? It certainly looks like there's a foreign market to me.

Recently Damon Diddit and Natural Langdon, independent African American filmmakers from Brownsville Brooklyn in New York City, produced a film depicting the realities of life in their community called "Bullets over Brownsville" and were invited to Berlin, Germany where the movie screened at a film festival. They also produced a reality program of that experience called the "Unglamorous Life of Filmmaking. Now, it certainly looks like there's a foreign market to me. It's very strange that George Lucas would speak out openly about the Hollywood movie system and their views when they pay him millions to make films. I wonder; is this a publicity stunt designed to get blacks into the theaters on January 20, 2012?