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Kam Williams Table

Book & Film Reviews, Interviews, Commentary

 

 

Kam Williams  is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the country. He is a member of both the African-American Film Critics Association and The New York Film Critics Online. In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Mr.  Williams lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.

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Commentary

 

Deal with the Devil

Election Day Returns

Hillary Clinton Revisited and Reviled

Race, Color, Language & Immigration Hysteria

Strange Fruit in Jena

There Must Still Be Something Out of Kilter Response to Don Imus

Vote Fraud Costs Obama

What’s Going On?: Black-on-Black Homicide Hits Home

Who Would Jesus Bomb

 

Interviews: 

Aron Ranen--Black Hair Industry

Samuel Jackson--Black Snake Moan

Brian Sparks Reflecting on Being White

Brooklyn Sudano

Colin Roach

Daryle Jenkins: The Klanbuster

Dennis LeRoy Moore

Forest Whitaker: The Last King of Scotland  

Gore Vidal Goes Off  

Kola Boof 

Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs

Master P, Hip-Hop Entrepreneur

Maxine Waters  

Nicole Ari Parker with Kam Willi

Rutina Wesley

Samuel Jackson--Black Snake Moan

Sean Diddy Combs

Shelby Steele

Stephen Carter

Tasha Smith

Thandie Newton

Vanessa Williams

 

 

Reviews (Kam Williams)

The 10 Best Black Books of 2007

African American Lives 2

As an Act of Protest

The Audacity of Hope

Black Cinema  (2005)

Blacktrospective 2006

Boys of Baraka

Cooked From the Streets to the Stove, from Cocaine to Foie Gras

Crisis of the Black Intellectual

Diary of a Lost Girl (book)

Do Me Twice: My Life after Islam (book review)

Dreamgirls Top Film of 2006

Four Sophisticated Film Reviews -- Flags of Our Fathers / SoulMate / Death of a President  / Color of the Cross

The Great Debaters Top Film of 2007

How to Reclaim the American Dream -- Review of The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

I'm African and Proud

Medical Apartheid

NAACP Image Awards    

A Queen Sweep   

Ralph Ellison: A Biography

Revisiting a Banner Year for Black Writers (book) 

Rough Crossings  (book)

The Stork Market:America’s Multi-Billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry

We Gotta Have It   (book)

Women of a New Tribe

 

 

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Books on Blacks in American Film

 

Why We Make Movies: Black Filmmakers Talk About the Magic of Cinema (2003)

 

Black Film as a Signifying Practice: Narration and the African American Aesthetic Tradition  (1999)

 

Representing; Hip Hop and the Production of Black Cinema (1999)

 

Manthia Diawara. Black American Cinema (1993)

 

bell hooks, Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies  (1996)

 

Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretative History of Blacks in American Films

 

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Films on DVD

 

Barber Shop / Woman, Thou Art Loosed / Amistad / Crash / Hustle and Flow / Tupac / Douglass

 

Sugar Cane Alley  / Malcolm XGet on the Bus / Bowling for Columbine  Sankofa / Daughters of the Dust

 

Lumumba / Sometime in April / The Agronomist  /  Black Orpheus / The Sidney Poitier DVD Collection

 

Cotton Comes to Harlem / The Spook Who Sat by the Door / Putney Swope / Education of Sonny Carson

 

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Blaxploitation films on DVD

 

Baadasssss Cinema (documentary) / Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

 

 SuperflyCleopatra Jones Foxy Brown / Shaft / Shaft's Big Score! / Shaft in Africa /

 

 Slaughter  /   Slaughter's Big Rip-Off  /  Hell Up in Harlem  / Black Caesar  / Across 110 th Street 

 

Legend of Nigger Charley / The Ladies Man / Undercover Brother / Austin Powers in Goldmember

 

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Barry Michael Cooper  --  Screenwriter for New Jack City, Above the Rim, & Sugar Hill

 

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 We Gotta Have It

Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006

By Esther IveremReviewed by Kam Williams

Do Me Twice: My Life after Islam A Memoir by Sonsyrea Tate / Women of a New Tribe By Jerry Taliaferro

 

 

Selected Film Reviews

 

African Films on DVD

The African Studies Film Festival Program at Morgan

Akeelah and the Bee  (Review)( Marvin X)

Antwone Fisher (Review)  (Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.)

As An Act of Protest

          Anthology Film Archives

          Best Black Movie   (Kam Williams)

          Dennis Leroy Moore Bio

          Dennis Leroy Moore Interview

           Exposing the Black Man's Psyche

           Most Daring Film Out Right Now  

           The Pushkin Effect (Rome Canaal)

           Strong Black Atavistic Image

 

Banished How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town  (Kam Williams)

Barry Michael Cooper  

Books on African Film

Birth of a Genre

The Birth of a Nation  (Review)

Boys of Baraka (Review) (Kam Williams)

Bringing Down the House  (Review) (Film Critique; Junious Ricardo Stanton)

Color of the Cross  Review (Kam Williams)

Congo White King  (Review) Review 2) (Esther Iverem)

Conversation on Black Film

Daughter from Danang  (Review) The Imperial Camera Lens as Documentary Form (Soo Na)

Deacons for Defense  Review   (Amin Sharif)

Death of a President   Review (Kam Williams)

Dreamgirls (Review) (Kam Williams)

Flags of Our Fathers Review (Kam Williams)

Good Looks! Programming  (Amin Sharif)

Gospel of the Game  (Marvin X)

How the Riots Might Have Turned Out (The Spook Who Sat by the Door)

Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius 'Hook'  Mitchel (Documentary) (Review)

Hustle and Flow  (Review) (Esther Iverem)

K-Ville Cop TV Show

The Last King of Scotland  (Forest Whitaker Interview)

My Son The Fanatic   (Review) (Marvin X)

The Passion of Christ  Review (John Sankofa)

Maangamizi (the Ancient One) (film review; Marvin X)

Malibu's Most Wanted  (Review -- The Beat Goes On (Junious Ricardo Stanton)

Melvin Van Peebles and his Pals

NYFCO Movie Awards 2006 (Kam Williams)

The Pursuit of Happyness  (Review) (Marvin X)

The Right Time: Lesbian and Bisexual Characters in Black Movies (Sarah Warn)

Roots Review (Gerald Forshey)

Sam Greenlee's Book as Film  (The Spook Who Sat by the Door)

Silence: In Search of Black Female Sexuality in America (Review ) (R. Lewis)

SoulMate  Review (Kam Williams)

Talk To Me (Vince Rogers)

Tears of the Sun  (Review)  (Bakari Akil II)     

Top Films of 2005)  (Kam Willams)

Top Films of 2006 (Kam Williams)

The Trouble With Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (Film Critique; Junious Ricardo Stanton)  

Unchained Memories (Review) (Amins Sharif)

Unforgivable Blackness The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Review) (Amin Sharif)

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Books on African Film

African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent / Symbolic Narratives: African Cinema / African Cinema: Politics and Culture 

 

Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives In Sub-Saharan Francophone African Films  / Black African Cinema  

 

African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze / Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers

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Related files

Birth of a Genre 

Interview with Gore Vidal

Melvin Van Peebles

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