Floyd Webb
founder/curator
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Imani Davis
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Blacknuss Network is a 40 Year Legacy
BlacknussNetwork.com and Blacknuss.tv are alternative media networks with over 40 years of experience in the curation and exhibition of filmworks from the global Black diaspora. Creative director Floyd Webb founded the critically acclaimed Blacklight Film Festival in Chicago in 1982 with Chicago Filmmakers and the Film Center of the Art Institute. Blacknuss.tv is not just a streaming channel, but a mission to build a sustainable channel with a subscription base supporting and producing new and original content from up-and-coming new talent. Presenting an eclectic mix of thematic public domain content, the programs include new compelling works by Black independent filmmakers and overlooked works like Chris St. John’s Top of the Heap (1972). Original programming will include short dramas, documentaries, and AfroFuturist short films from the young creatives of the African continent and all over the Global Black Diaspora. (more…)
GLOBAL BLACK FILM NEWS
We bring you daily news about the black film and cinema of “the other” on a daily basis. It is essential that we as content creators, curator and audience stay up to speed on whats happening in our world and create analysis for our way forward. Blacknuss Network is all about building new alliances at home and abroad for production, financing and distribution networks, and staying on top of the latest technologies.
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blacknuss.tv is a large part of the Blacknuss Network and we need you to help us subscribe and grow. We are a small channel, presenting curated archival works, the works of allied independent filmmakers and licensing new dynamic and compelling content that speaks to black identity and character in a way seldom seen. It is our intent to build a global subscription base of 100,000+ over an 18 month period. This will allow us to begin low budget original works, contract new, talented storytellers based in our local communities.
MERCHANDISE
In our efforts to become self-sustaining we will present and ongoing and ever-changing line of merchandise leveraging and celebrating black diaspora cinema history. From t-shirts to crew hi-top sneakers and coffee cups, you have the opportunity to support our mission of building a whole ‘nother kind of black media network. We want to appeal to the global arena that reveres black culture across racial and ethnic lines.
Upcoming Programs
Watch for Fall/Winter 2024 Programs
Past Programs
We Fly Away: Screening and Discussion Series on Afrofuturism
June 11 Kiku and Isamu, Japan, 1959
July 23 Without Pity, Italy, 1948
Aug 20 The Proud Valley, Wales, 1940, 76 min
Sept 17 Dainah, La Mestisse, France (1932)
Charleston, France, 1927
Buy tickets to Symbol of the Unconquered at
Siskel Film Center Ticketing
Black Actors in Foreign Cinema
Program 4: DAÏNAH LA MÉTISSE (1932, 51 min)
with Sur Air Un de Charleston (France, 1927, 24 min)
In-person Screening & Discussion Series
Saturday, Sept 17, 2022, 7pm CST
Chicago Filmmakers
1326 W Hollywood Ave, Chicago, IL 60660
Directed by Jean Grémillon
Key Cast: Habib Beglia, Laurence Clavius, and Gaston Dubosc
DAÏNAH LA MÉTISSE is an engrossing exploration of class, race, and murder set on an ocean liner. Young Dainah is traveling with her African husband, a sophisticated magician who performs for the ship’s passengers. While out on deck alone one evening she counters an engineer, from below decks, who mistakes pleasantries for flirtation. When she disappears the next day, suspicion spreads not only to the engineer but also to Dainah’s husband. Director Jean Grémillon, is best known for five films made between 1937 and 1944: Gueule d’amour (1937), L’Étrange Monsieur Victor (1938), Remorques (1941), Lumière d’été (1943), and Le ciel est à vous (1944). Grémillon rejected what he referred to as “mechanical naturalism” in favor of “the discovery of that subtlety which the human eye does not perceive directly but which must be shown by establishing the harmonies, the unknown relations, between objects and beings; it is a vivifying, inexhaustible source of images that strike our imaginations and enchant our hearts.”
The film stars Habib Benglia, dashing, mysterious, romantic, in yet another role that would have been frowned upon by the Hayes Motion Picture Code.
The Hays Code was a set of industry guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States from 1934 to 1968. Habib Benglia (1895–1960) was an Algerian-born film actor who settled in France. He was the first French-African actor to land major roles in both cinema (he acted in Renoir and Pujol movies among others) and theater (performing in over 100 plays). He was known for Children of Paradise (1945), La Confession (1959), Tu seras Duchesse (1932), and Tamango (1958) with Dorothy Dandridge and Curt Jurgens
Benglia and Paul Robeson were contemporaries and both worked internationally in major roles in film and theater. There is no biographical information about Laurance Clavius, the female star of the film. 
SUR UN AIR DE CHARLESTON (1927, 24 min)
Directed by Jean Renoir
Starring Johnny “Wah Wah” Hudgins and Catherine Hessling
2028. Europe has been destroyed in a devastating war. An African scientist decides to explore in a flying bubble. Arriving above what remains of Paris, he puts his machine on the roof of a Morris column, which serves as shelter for a beautiful white aboriginal savage, whose only companion is a monkey. When the savage discovers the arrival of the foreign explorer, she ties him to the column and performs a ritual and sensual dance in front of him. The prisoner realizes that this is the Charleston, a historic social dance originating from his people, all traces of which have been lost for ages. The white dancer frees the explorer and teaches him the dance. Happy – but much to the monkey’s despair, both board the flying bubble and fly off to Africa.
The short film is an exploration in the surrealist cinema of 1920’s post WWI Paris and stars African America burlesque comedian, mime and dancer, Johnny “Wah WaH” Hudgins. When Hudgins wasn’t on the stages at the Apollo, the Lafayette and other Harlem clubs, playing the burlesque circuit n America, he was on tour in Europe, particularly in London and in Paris, where he was hailed as the “colored Charlie Chaplin.” Like Chaplin, Hudgins was a master at pantomime and rarely, if ever, spoke from the stage.
Hudgins performed his act in “burnt cork” aka “blacked-up.” He presents an odd resemblence to the printed comic stereotypes of the period. His role in this 1927 surrealist film contrasts greatly with the sophisticated role of Habib Benglia in the evening’s companion film, Dainah La Metisse (France, 1932) made 5 years later.
French filmmaker Jean Renoir would later remark that he directed the sensual dance fantasy Charleston because he’d “just discovered American jazz.” He also had some stock footage left over from his previous silent success Nana, and decided it would be provident to fashion a new film from these leavings. Even without the benefit of sound, one can hear the jazzy rhythms of Charleston through the exuberant gyrations of an African-American dancer whom Renoir and his star, actress Catherine Hessling, had discovered for this picture. Originally titled Sur un air de Charleston, the film was also released as Charleston Parade in English-speaking countries. In some areas of the US and Europe, the film was greeted with protests from censorship boards who simply couldn’t appreciate the aesthetic value in Catherine Hessling’s near-nude dance numbers.
We’ll surely have a lot to talk about after the two films.
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Kiku and Isamu, Japan (1959)
Director: Tadashi Imai
Writer: Yôko Mizuki
Starring Emiko Takahashi, Tanie Kitabayashi, George Okunoyama
Program includes recorded interview with child star, Emiko Takahashi
Immediately after the Second World War, sister Kiku and brother Isamu, whose mother was a prostitute and the father was a black GI, live with their grandmother in the country. Because their colour, hair is different from Japanese, they’d have a hard time, being bullied or treated like unusual creatures.
This exceptional post World War II Japanese film explores the lives of these two children, a sister & brother, fathered by a black American soldier, and orphaned, they live with their grandmother in a small village. This multi-layered tale touches on race, culture and identity.
With outstanding performances, the characterizations portray a tremendous humanistic dimension. There is the wise grandmother, Tanie Kitabayashi, compassionate, pragmatic, and in her only ever film appearance. Emiko Takahashi, as Kiku, gives a sincere, moving and spirited performance. This is a progressive story and is not impeded by dwelling on the negatives or self pity.
Directed by Tadashi Imai, a radical socialist. known for his social realist films, he is mostly interested in depicting the tragedies of human life. Often described as ‘nakanai realism’, or ‘a realism without tears’, Imai’s films show the hard struggles of the poor confronting social challenges.
At the heart of this brilliant film is Kiku, an inspired and bold casting choice from Imai, it would spoil to say anymore, purely innocent KiKu asks her grandmother a simple but most profound question ” why are some people black and some people white ?
Winner of the 10th Blue Ribbon Awards 1959. Best Film, Best Actress – Tanie Kitabayashi, Best Screenplay – Youko Mizuki
1959 Coverage in Ebony Magazine
Animation in Afrofuturism
Sun March 20, 3pm CST, Blacknuss Network presents award-winning Caribbean animator Alain Bidard in a conversation about Animation and Afrofuturist Cinema.
https://app.beem.xyz/e/afrofuturism-shorts–animation-with-alain-bidard
Alan Bidard is an award-winning animation film director from the French island of Martinique in the Caribbean. During the last two decades, he has produced and directed animated features and short films, animated series, documentaries and live-action films which won more than 60 awards and 250 nominations in festivals worldwide.
In 2015, Alan Bidard made history by releasing the first animated feature film ever made in Martinique — “Battledream Chronicle”, awarded 24 awards and 70 nominations worldwide. Then, in 2018, he created the first Caribbean animated TV series awarded with 25 awards and 105 nominations worldwide.
As for now, Alan Bidard is the only Caribbean animation film director who has won that many recognitions. In love with the animation medium, in 2021, Alan Bidard released his second animated feature film, “Opal”.
The Africa in Afrofuturism
Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Screening and discussion, Sun. March 6, 3pm at Watchbeem.com
with Jean Pierre-Bekolo live on-line from Cameroon, West Africa
How have African filmmakers approached the subject and context of Afrofuturism in cinema? In this event we will review clips of Sci-Fi/Afrofuturist films made in Africa and engage in a discussion with filmmaker/Afrofuturist filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo.
Jean-Pierre Bekolo is a noted African film director from Cameroon. He is one of the pioneer Afrofuturist artist/filmmakers. His films have always dealt with the intersection of myth, magic and its intersection with reality.
With his film “Aristotle’s Plot” (1996), Africa’s entry in the British Film Institute’s series on 100 Years of Cinema, a series of films commemorating the centenary of cinema that has included the participation of artists such as Scorsese, Bertolucci, Frears, Miller, Reitz, and Godard, he effectively hijacks their original idea and transforms it into an Afrofuturtist manifesto on the heritage of African Cinema. An official selection at Sundance, Bekolo was considered to be an “increasingly fearless trickster.”
His avant-garde political thriller “Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes)” (2005) premiered at the Toronto film festival and was nominated in two categories at the French Césars in 2009. It is now considered to be the first African sci-fi movie. Les Saignantes won the Silver Stallion and Best Actress Awards at FESPACO (Pan African Film and Television Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) in 2007.
Bekolo also created in 2008, a video installation called “An African Woman in Space” that was on display at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris as part of the Diaspora exhibition curated by Claire Denis. Banned in Cameroon in 2013, Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s controversial film “Le President” questions the phenomenon of Africa’s “perpetual governments”. His other works include, a 4 hour documentary “Les Choses et Les Mots de Mudimbe”, a portrait of the Congolese intellectual V-Y Mudimbe, one of the most important living African philosophers and writers. This film was part of the official selection of the 2015 Berlinale. “An unusual film, as fascinating as its object/subject, opulent, sensitive, clever, and radical. Another station of delightful postcolonial, cosmopolitan filmmaking”.