Retrospective: Camille Billops & James V. Hatch

They collected and left behind an impressive archive of Black art. Their most personal legacy is their documentaries, known by analogy to one of their titles as the "string of pearls" of American Black documentary filmmaking.

Camille Billops was born in 1933 in Los Angeles, California as the daughter of a cook and a seamstress. Through films we see that her mother had ambitions as a stylist and model, which her daughters imbibed. Camille developed her original style, both of image and artistic expression in sculpture, ceramics and lithography while traveling and studying fine arts at the City College of New York. Ultimately, we recognize the original combination of elements taken from African and Native American culture in her style, makeup and costume. In the film Take Your Bag (1988), Billops explores the family origins of this style, dating back to her great-grandmother. Her participation in group exhibitions made her realize that African-American art is as rich as it is poorly documented. Billops met James V. Hatch, a lecturer at UCLA and the City College of New York and a historian of Black theater. Their shared love for and activism in the preservation of this ephemeral heritage and art, which experienced a renaissance in the 1970s, brought them together. She recounts the circumstances of their meeting in Finding Christa (1991), and the relationship between a White man and a Black woman in The KKK Boutique Ain't Just Rednecks (1994). As a couple, they joined various coalitions and associations in support of the Black art movement. The energy of these years is perfectly expressed by the title of one of her artworks I Am Black, I Am Black, I Am Dangerously Black (1973). In a SoHo loft in New York City, they created a hub for meeting and archiving the work of Black artists, seamlessly integrating them into the local vibrant multicultural bohemia. Their efforts encompassed hundreds of interviews, the collection of dramas, novels, printed pamphlets, journals, and letters. Their life's work has found a permanent home at Emory University in Atlanta. While their films have been lovingly restored and continue to roam the festival circuit to the delight of the public.

Black documentary cinema, as a distinct facet of American culture, remains underexplored. Relatively speaking, the most attention is paid to the blaxploitation genre, somewhat less to independent feature films, and little is known about the long tradition of race films. One can make up for these shortcomings with Elvis Michel's video essay Is That Black Enough for You?!? (2022). The films of Billops and Hatch belong to a completely niche stream of Black feminist documentaries. In addition to individual screenings, the film, Suzanne, Suzanne (1982) was recently included in a larger project – the exhibition No Master Territories in the form of a multi-channel feminist cinema non-fiction at Haus Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. The exhibition, in a slightly altered form (unfortunately, without the Billops film) then went to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. The placement of Billops' and Hatch's films in this global and historical context makes one realize where to look for the tradition of a documentary with ethnographic qualities, portraying the daily life of Black people. Zora Neale Hurston, known for her work as a writer and anthropologist during the 1920s and 1930s, also made significant contributions to early Black cinema. She was later rediscovered by the renowned writer and activist Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple.

Billops entered the world of filmmaking in the early 1980s when she was in her 50s, following a decade of activism during the Black cinema renaissance from 1968 to 1978. Her closest family circle and the milieu of New York artists became the subject of autoethnographic film studies for her. In this trend, the slogan 'private is political' did not have as individualistic a dimension as one might assume in advance. On the contrary, the 'private self' became a political 'social we’, eschewing racist stereotypes. This is why not Camille herself, or even less James, but the circle of people closest to them became the collective protagonist of the retrospective. Women make up the majority of the protagonists – including in Older Women and Love (1987), but the portraits of men and the interviews they conducted with them for the film A String of Pearls (2002) also provide invaluable material. Alice Diop has a similar attentiveness to her characters, as we could appreciate in the films Towards Tenderness (2016) or Danton’s Death (2011).

In retrospect, Billops-Hatch films strongly resonate with the ideas of key figures in Black feminism, coinciding with groundbreaking works by prominent feminist philosophers. In her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984, Polish edition 2013), bell hooks highlighted the stark differences in experiences between middle-class White women and Black women. For the latter, issues such as abortion, racism, and the drug war were profound concerns, often intertwined with the broader struggles shared with men. Angela Davis, in her work Women, Race and Class (1981, Polish edition 2022), delved into the perpetual labor of Black women and their complex relationship with the fight for abortion rights. Both were of the opinion that feminism was not possible or effective without the involvement of men – comrades in the struggle, at the same time potential beneficiaries of moral and political change. In Billops-Hatch films, this united front is expressed behind and in front of the camera. Behind the camera, Camille is joined by her partner James and his son, Dion Hatch. In front of the lens, you'll find her nephew, her father, and the life partners of female relatives and friends. Their documentaries, as described by Billops, do more than prescribe how things should be; they reveal how things are. They present a candid view, exposing widespread racism, even within communities of color. At the same time, they exude warmth and faith in reason, making things better than they initially seemed.

Monika Talarczyk

Films presented in the retrospective:

• Suzanne, Suzanne (1982)
• Older Women and Love (1987)
• Finding Christa (1991)
• The KKK Boutique Ain't Just Rednecks (1994)
• Take Your Bag (1998)
• A String of Pearls (2002)