a. In the beginning of the 1990s, discuss some factors that encouraged Hollywood to embrace more black directors and to produce bold, gritty films featuring black characters.
The factors encouraging Hollywood to make these gritty films, often depicting life in the ‘hood’ and the situations young men faced, was the success of films that had followed this sort of ‘genre’, such as Do The Right Thing and most notably in my opinion, Boyz N The Hood. Younger audiences showed up big time for these films, leading to similar films getting financed solely because of the precedent these films set.
I found the production history of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X very interesting. The immense controversy surrounding the film before it was even shot due to its biographical elements is something that we tend to see nowadays when a new biopic is announced, but often these films are enthusiastically financed and do not face the immense risk that Malcolm X did. This is most likely due to the controversy surrounding X himself, but it is also important to acknowledge that Spike Lee is considered an extremely controversial figure in filmmaking, with many regarding him as a racist. The long runtime was also a major point of contention, as historically, movies have gotten longer over time, and this was before infamously long modern films, such as many marvel movies. There were a lot of things working against it, and yet Lee wouldn’t compromise on his vision and still got the film released.