As its title suggests, "Afro Promo" shows how images of African Americans have been promoted in the movies represented by this no-frills compilation of 31 "coming attraction" preview trailers. The title is slightly misleading (the earliest trailer is actually for the 1951 basketball feature "Harlem Globetrotters"), but curators Jenni Olson and Karl Knapper have covered most of the essential territory regarding African Americans in post-World War II American cinema. The postwar years saw the rise of popular black musicians in movies (including Nat "King" Cole and many other beloved performers in 1958's "St. Louis Blues") and this trend led to "social conscience" dramas like "The Defiant Ones", "Raisin in the Sun", and "A Patch of Blue" as the civil rights movement of the 1960s progressed and black actors like Sidney Poitier became bankable box-office stars. The relative seriousness of these prestige dramas eventually gave way to the more blatantly commercial prospects of "Blaxploitation" cinema in the 1970s, and most of the trailers included here hail from that vibrant, entertaining period of filmmaking, when "Blaxplo" hits like "Cleopatra Jones", "Foxy Brown", and "Blacula" were showing in theaters along with more "respectable" black-oriented films like "Sounder" (1972) and Gordon Parks's 1969 drama "The Learning Tree". Several milestone films are not represented here (including "Shaft" and "Superfly"), but some of these trailers serve as curious reminders of fascinating obscurities (like Jack Arnold's 1975 "Blaxplo" Western "Boss Nigger" and the Ossie Davis-directed 1972 drama "Black Girl") that have never been available in any video format. And while all of these films deserve a place in movie history, the trailers themselves have their own historical value as collectible memorabilia, rescued from destruction and (in many cases) appearing with scratches, dirt-specks, and hastily repaired film-breaks to indicate various degrees of age and neglect. A sub-menu separates all 31 trailers into eight convenient categories (Blaxploitation, Music, Historical, Poitier, etc.), and while it's obvious that "Afro Promo" was rather crudely assembled from whatever was available (and an introductory essay by Yale scholar Terri Francis is mysteriously missing from the special features), it still qualifies as a lively introduction to the good, bad, and ugly trends in African American film.
Bonus features include two shorts from the "Other Cinema" archive of alternative cinema: Roger Beebe's "Famous Irish-Americans" is a playfully humorous look at Black-Irish heritage that calls into question the tyranny of racial classification, and Christopher Harris's "Reckless Eyeballing" (2004) is an experimental art-film that uses repetitive, impressionistic treatment of solarized black-and-white footage to explore racial identity as depicted through images of African American outlaws. It's likely these interesting shorts would never be seen outside of college film classes and experimental film festivals if they weren't curiously included on this DVD. "--Jeff Shannon"