"Through a chronology, a list of acronyms and abbreviations, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, black-&-white photos, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on actors, actresses, movies, producers, organizations, awards, film credits, and terminology, this book provides a better understanding of the role African Americans played in film history"--Amazon.com.

"Film noir - literally "black cinema" - is the label customarily given to a group of black-and-white American films, mostly crime thrillers, made between 1940 and 1959. Today, many dispute what classifies a noir film and which films should be included in this category. These problems are partly caused because film noir is a retrospective label that was not used in the 1940s or 1950s by the film industry as a production category. Consequently, its...

"The Beat Movement was and is a literary and arts movement, the most radical and innovative of the 20th century, and because it was so open to new ideas of poetics and aesthetics, it has adapted from decade to decade. The history of the Beat Movement is still being written in the early years of the 21st century. Unlike other kinds of literary and artistic the Beat Movement is self-perpetuating. After the 1950s generation, a new generation arose in...