Toward a More Perfect Rebellion

Toward a More Perfect Rebellion tells the riveting story of the socially engaged filmmakers of color who studied in the Ethno-Communications Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, between 1969 and 1973. While the program is best known for training the trailblazing group of Black directors known as the L.A. Rebellion, this book also includes the radical Asian American, Chicana/o, and Native American filmmakers who collaborated alongside their Black classmates to create one of the most expansive and groundbreaking bodies of work of any US university cohort. Through extensive interviews with the filmmakers and cross-racial analysis of their collective filmography, Josslyn Jeanine Luckett sheds light on a largely untold history of media activists working outside Hollywood yet firmly rooted in Los Angeles, aiming their cameras with urgency and tenderness to capture their communities' stories of power, struggle, and improvisational brilliance.

Josslyn Jeanine Luckett is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at New York University. She is a former staff writer for Queen Sugar and The Steve Harvey Show, and her original teleplay Love Song was directed by Julie Dash for MTV.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: In Order to Form a New Los Angeles Cinema
1. The "Urban Crisis" in Westwood? Film and Social Change at UCLA after Watts
2. Elyseo Taylor and the Ethno Ethos: One Foot on Campus, One Foot in the Community
3. Relational Filmographies of Rebellion
4. Uses of Ethno: The Ethno Filmography as Pedagogical Power
Conclusion: A Filmography for the Fire Next Time

Notes
Selected Filmography
Bibliography
Index