NoirDynosaur
Yurrrrrrrrrr
The film, called Something Good – Negro Kiss, is thought to be the earliest known depiction of African-American intimacy on screen in the US. Film scholars at the University of Chicago and the University of Southern California recently uncovered the film and dated it to 1898, thanks in part to the distinctive camera used by the filmmaker, a former vaudeville performer.
This week, the silent film entered into the US Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, along with 24 other titles including The Shining, Brokeback Mountain, and Jurassic Park, which were selected for their importance in US film history.
The film shows a new side of how race was portrayed in early film, and it has moved creators today.
“There’s a performance there because they’re dancing with one another, but their kissing has an unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure, and amusement as well,” Allyson Nadia Field, one the historians who helped identify the film, told the University of Chicago. “It is really striking to me, as a historian who works on race and cinema, to think that this kind of artifact could have existed in 1898.”
(A 1898 film may be the earliest known on-screen depiction of African-American love)