{"id":588,"date":"2017-02-08T19:59:52","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T19:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/?p=588"},"modified":"2017-02-08T21:33:17","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T21:33:17","slug":"precis-for-the-ambitions-of-william-foster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/2017\/02\/08\/precis-for-the-ambitions-of-william-foster\/","title":{"rendered":"Pr\u00e9cis for “The Ambitions of William Foster”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ambitions of William Foster<\/em> by Allyson Field\u00a0reflects on the career of a Chicago-based African-American filmmaking entrepreneur who was always interested in the possibility of race filmmaking in an interracial context. William Foster\u00a0was the first\u00a0black filmmaker to visit the offices of any motion picture trade journal, and sought a venture in the motion picture industry. In the early 1910s, Foster’s visit triggered\u00a0tripartite view from white producers: novelty, something to be dismissed out of hand, and a potential profit making vehicle. Foster, on the other hand, was able to respond to and take advantage of these assumptions:\u00a0he\u00a0tried to create a cinema that would be interracial from its origins by making a filmmaking venture around multiple and intersecting kinds of practices such as comedy, drama, actuality, local film and official public record. \u00a0Since he achieved a unique combination of an active advocate of the uplift movement and entrepreneur who also sought\u00a0profit when practicing its tenets, \u00a0the eventual failure of Foster deserves a careful evaluation. According to the author, it was not only a result of Foster’s personal struggles, but also suggested the limitations of uplift cinema itself.<\/p>\n

In the beginning of his filmmaking venture, Foster focused on running the Foster Photo Play Company – a local company that he bought up to produce generally positive images of contemporary black urban culture in Chicago. After receiving strong support from the black audiences, he also screened several films for the white population.\u00a0With the huge popularity, Foster was convinced that the moving pictures could be held for black entrepreneurs and for race uplift. He published multiple columns on African American journals, attempting to rally support by appealing to race pride. However, behind the initial success, the struggle to translate enthusiasm into profits<\/strong> began to haunt Foster’s venture, which turned out to be a fatal threat throughout his career. To expand the market into other northern cities with concentrated black communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

To expand into markets in other cities with concentrated black communities, Foster started his Southern Tour during the winter of 1913. In Jacksonville, Florida, he was able to set up a connection with the Warner studios and produce films for them. Unfortunately, after realizing that Warner was merely trying to procuring African-American talents, he denounced a Warner movie for “only appeals to the ignorant class and race hating whites”.\u00a0Returning to Chicago after the unsuccessful Southern Tour, Foster was faced with intensified financial struggle. Trying to expand sales within and beyond the black community, he produced more films that featured black lives. While advertising his motion pictures as a solution to the lack of positive black figures on screen, he made films that directly countered the Dixon’s\/ Griffth’s films. With support from the most successful African-American cafe owner in Chicago, Foster produced multiple comedies, and later a patriotic drama with funding from an interracial partnership.<\/span><\/p>\n

The apex of Foster’s career could have been the production of Smile Film, a project that dedicated to film the smiling faces of relatives & lovers of Chicago African American troopers fighting overseas, \u00a0and screen the film in front of the soldiers to boost their morale. Supported by Rex Weber\u00a0(a white politician), Foster’s plan was approved by the Chicago administration and his films delivered with the help from the US Committee of Public Information. However, by the time this 2668- feet-long film was sent to France, the war was almost over and there were no documentation of it ever being actually screened. Weber also\u00a0passed away a month later due to severe pneumonia:\u00a0since then Foster never found a stable funding for his filmmaking ventures.\u00a0<\/span>After WWI, Foster attempted to sell his studios in Florida, along with his other peripheral industries, meanwhile trying to introduce uplifting films into rural settlements and small towns. Eventually he moved to the rising scene of Hollywood, where he was never able to\u00a0make a significant impact in the uplift movement again.<\/p>\n

As Foster himself admitted, there was an important lack of African American economic participation\u00a0– “dim commercial vision” – which made Black entrepreneurs unable to offer stable funding. Reflecting on Foster’s career, the main theme was about a broad ambition clashing with compromised reality. \u00a0As suggested in the essay, \u00a0lack of funding and resources was essentially not only a threat to Foster’s interracial project, but also a\u00a0limitation of uplift cinema itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ambitions of William Foster by Allyson Field\u00a0reflects on the career of a Chicago-based African-American filmmaking entrepreneur who was always<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/classes\/dh150w17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}