While I'm still squirming in my seat about what effect limited release has on Black films, here's another pow! to American shortcoming and all-out failure in marketing and promoting independent Black films.
This pow! comes from my own alma mater. The would-be 'victim' is the blaxploitation parody brought to you by Arsenio Hall, Tommy Davidson, Michael Jai White's muscle mass and writer/director, Scott Sanders!
I had previously been irritated by the fact that the ONLY 'Black Dynamite' showings I'd stumbled upon were midnight ONLY screenings at the ONLY Landmark theater within D.C.-proper. Yes. I'm making it sound worse than it is (there's another Landmark in Bethesda...) In the short tidbit below (via Reelblack), Michael Jai White intimates how much more receptive (and ad-supportive!) international markets were over the U. [blocker] S. of A. He specifically mentions Rio de Janeiro...hee...heeheee...nudge...nudge...And he shares the story behind the film's global success.
But fear not Scott Sanders has a following. And to make matters better, one of my favorite professors shared the possibility that the crack of AM showings could really be in the spirit of midnight rambling--see Pearl Bowser's 1994 film about the 'race movies' of Oscar Micheaux's era.
Next week my old schoolmates will kick it with Scott Sanders in the Newhouse School. SO JEALOUS! They'll pick his brain about how to do it when distribution channels won't in this 9th Annual Conversation on Race & Entertainment. It's going down in Central NY...if you're headed up that way (why you would do that in the dead of winter, idk, but DO YOU!) check it out. newhouse.syr.edu
Take that weak [donkey] marketing! And a double punch for every other film that finds its market with NO help from you. :-P
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