Race Film Database

Project website: http://dhbasecamp.humanities.ucla.edu/afamfilm/about-the-project/

We are a group of undergraduate and graduate students in the Digital Humanities program at the University of California, Los Angeles. This main goal of this project was to collaboratively create a database on early African-American silent race films by drawing together information in a wide range of primary and secondary sources. For the purpose of this project, we determined that we would only include silent films created before 1930 by African-Americans companies for African-American audiences. This definition was the main factor that informed our decisions to include or exclude pieces of data. (You can read more about how we arrived at our definition here: http://dhbasecamp.humanities.ucla.edu/afamfilm/whatis/definition/.)

The database we have created contains information on films, actors, production companies, and other aspects of early silent-era African American race films. The database is intended to allow the public to learn about this period in film history that is too rarely discussed.