Left to its own devices on the floor just below the main gallery, the film and video screenings assembled by curator John Hanhardt served, at first glance, as a welcomed counterpoint to the main exhibition. Four months of continuous screenings on topical issues were delegated to five guest curators. In his catalogue essay "The Game," Clyde Taylor of Tufts University and Rockefeller Fellow in Residence for Media Culture and History at New York University, explores the posturings and signifying practices of black men born "into the white man's system." Works on view included: Pearl Bowser's documentary on Oscar Micheaux (a pioneer of black race movies in the early 30s and 40s), "Midnight Ramble" (1993); Charles Burnett's ode to rural traditions and mysticism intertwining a family of black men, "To Sleep With Anger" (1990); Larry Clark's sonic allegory investigating the music industry's exploitation of black jazz musicians, "Passing Through" (1977); David Johnson's neo-nationalist parody of buppie sellouts,"The Drop Squad" (1990); and Bill Gunn's independent cult classic homoerotic vampire flick, "Ganja and Hess.     "Black Masculinity Labor and Social Change," organized by Valerie Smith, a feminist scholar at UCLA, extends her work deciphering black realist traditions with an investigation of three films with labor-related themes. Shown were Michael Roemer's "Nothing But a Man" (1964), pairing Ivan Dixon and early black feminist icon Abby Lincoln; Charles Burnett's neo-realist, Watts lament, "Killer of Sheep" (1977); and Billy Woodbury's first and only film, a dramatic interaction between an unemployed male and his working wife, "Bless Their Little Hearts." Far from romanticizing these works, Smith subjects them to a gender critique that seeks out instances of inequity and misogyny. Other standouts in her program included: Ethiopian-born Haile Gerima's third feature film about a Vietnam veteran who makes connections between imperialism at home and abroad, "Ashes and Embers" (1983); and Wendell B. Harris, Jr.'s hilarious yet sardonic feature, "Cameleon Street" (1990), the saga of an underemployed black man who, like Franz Fanon, masters the art of impersonation and deception rather than resorting to rage.
	In "Black Man on Our Screens and the Empty Space in Representation," Ed Guerrero, a professor of film and literature at the University of Delaware, exposes the conflicts and contradictions of images produced by non-African-Americans for mass cultural consumption. He notes: "No matter what the outcome of the O.J. Simpson case, with O.J. cast as both star and suspect, it vividly argues the point. The color-conscious manipulation of O.J.'s spectacular fall from one polarity to the other is best expressed by the symbolically darkened mug shot on the cover of Time magazine. Resorting to political blackface, the magazine moves to expel O.J. from the lighter, celebrity realm of affluent Brentwood; returning him to the darker, underworld of black crime and the LA County jail."(1)     Philip Brian Harper, an assistant professor of English and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, curated "Walk on Parts and Special Subjects: Screen Representations of Gay Black Men." This segment centered on gay black men within Hollywood as well as independent African-American cinematic and television narratives. Harper cites a general hetero-aversion to any kind of eroticism in love scenes as a symptom of the invisibility of representations of black gay men in the mainstream. Inverting this scenario has, of course, been the work of gay male filmmakers themselves, such as the late Marlon Riggs, whose "Tongues Untied" bears the double-edged distinction of having shaken both the black gay male community with its unabashed subjectivity and the Republican party with its stark image of Otherness.(2) Black queens who manage to show some sense of humanity even within the aggressive environments in which they are depicted, pop up in Shirley Clarke's "Portrait of Jason" (1967) and Michael Schultz's "Car Wash" (1976) starring Antonio Fargas, who states in high style: "I'm more man than you'll ever be, and much more woman than you'll ever get."