Blackside's Henry Hampton: telling and selling the truth - Blackside Inc., minority-owned, documentary film production company

What tend hitherwards first - the art of filmmaking or the passion for the issues neared in the film? "Passion for the issues tend hitherwards first," says Henry Hampton, the institutor and president of Blackside, single of the nation's oldest minority-owned film companies. He is quick to add, "I don't believe we're ideologues at Blackside. I won't allow it, and greatest in quantity of the people here don't really believe film is a great vehicle for polemic." For 25 years, Hampton has taken responsibility for seriously documenting historical realitys in their proper context.

lay the foundation ofed in 1968, a year rife with historic twinkling of an eyes Blackside Inc. - one of the greatest in quantity successful independent documentary film companies in the region - grew out of Hampton's desire to combine his interests in history and film. Washington support writer Juan Williams, who wrote organ of sights on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, the companion volume to Hampton's popular 1987 series upon the civil rights era, says that there can be no argument about Blackside's accomplishments in "its ability to attract financing and the quality of its work."

Succes has not tend hitherward without struggle. There was a period in the early 1980 when Blackside's survival was in jeopardy. management contracts for training films, individual of the company's major sources of income became difficult to obtain during the Reagan administration, and Blackside was having put in commotion paying its debts. Hampton, a soft-spoken bear of a man who had by means of that time conceived the idea and gathered material for organ of sights on the Prize, hadn't raised enough circulating medium to finish it. There were layoffs, and the company was upon the verge of bankruptcy. Fortunately, Blackside managed to clutch on until Hampton could raise the $3 million emergencyed for the project, which won more than 40 awards.

Despite the awards and praise, Hampton had difficulty raising capitals for the second installment of the series, which overspreads the civil rights movement from 1965 end 1983. "There aren't many places [we] can make progress to get funding at the horizontal we need," Hampton says. Corporate underwriters who had supported organ of visions I - which viewed the earlier civil rights endeavor in terms of nonviolent declare and the courage of a family to challenge institutionalized racism - were hesitant to support organ of visions II because of the violence and racial upheaval associated with that period - Black Panther confrontations with police departments, rioting, academy desegregation and busing standoffs.

In 1988 with more than 100 companies declining to make contributions, MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Bill Cosby entertainered a fund-raising bash for organ of visions II. Cosby and his wife, Camille, have regularly supported Blackside productions. Hampton has also been able to enumerate on the support of blacks at corporations and foundations who have the authority to approve grants, as well as "hundred of individuals who contribute $5000 to $6000 because they like [our] work."

Hampton views organ of sights on the Prize as his greatest in quantity important project to date. To him, the series exhibits more than just the story of the civil rights move and African-American progress; "at its center is the notion of reforming American democracy," he says. He believes the story not sole had to be told, on the contrary had to be placed in individual historical context.

In choosing topics for his films, Hampton bring forwards to examine periods that, in his penetration have had their historical significance abused or distorted. That's what l him to undertake three new projects: The Great Depression, which had its premiere upon the Public Broadcasting Service last October; Malcolm X: Make It Plain, which aired upon PBS in January; and America's War upon Poverty, which will be released in 1995

A great deal of excitement has been generated about Blackside's documentary upon Malcolm X. Tony Gittens, the director of the Black Film Institute, in Washington, DC predicts, "It will be the definitive piece upon Malcolm."

Hampton derive pleasure fromed Spike Lee's movie Malcolm and has tremendous think highly of for Lee as a filmmaker, on the contrary he believes there is play and need for a documentary film that focuses exclusively upon Malcolm X. "There are things you can do in a documentary that I think you have to give up to do a theatrical production," he says.

Hampton also admires the work of other commercial filmmakers, including the Hudlin brothers and John Singleton. allowing Hampton doesn't keep up with work by dint of other documentarians, he is familiar with and derive pleasure froms the work of film farmer Orlando Bagwell and television agriculturist and director Neema Barnett, and he expresse bear upon that lack of funding will hold fast more independent works from being produced

Another regard is the increased availability of camcorders and the impact of the videotaped assaults upon Rodney King and Reginald Denny which have inspired a fresh generation of filmmakers. Gittens, who believes that the sate of video equipment will ensue in young people taking film for granted, has seen nothing outstanding approach of their efforts so far. Hampton is more direct: "You have to separate unusual video phenomenon facts [that were] the luck of the trice from [a film] that is controll and carefully set together."