By Julie Dash
The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Dupree, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo. This highly-acclaimed drama by one of the leading African American women directors follows Mignon's dilemma, Ester's struggle and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality.
From the director of the critically acclaimed Daughters of the Dust.
Reviews
~ "Illusion beats with a strong feminist heart: in the film Mignon Dupree learns to reject the Hollywood model but also to create her own." - Anne Christine D'Adesky, The Guardian
~ "One of the most brilliant achievements in style and concept in recent American filmmaking…" - Clyde Taylor, Guest Curator Whitney Museum of Art
~ "Cleverly uses film itself as a metaphor for the myths fostered by whites and men about Blacks and women." - Marcia Pally, Village Voice
|