Meet Jacqueline Stewart, the black scholar who’ll introduce ‘Gone with the Wind’ on its return to HBO Max
In the light of Geroge Floyd’s brutal killing, which has sparked protests and riots across the world, HBO Max recently decided to take down Hollywood’s 1939 classic ‘Gone with the Wind’ over its “racists depictions”. It has been now announced that ‘Gone with the Wind’ will return to the American streaming platform with an introduction by the black scholar Jacqueline Stewart. She aims towards explaining to the audience the historical content of the film and talks in-depth about the prejudices against the black community in American society as observed back in the day.
Who is Jacqueline Stewart?
Jacqueline Stewart, who serves as a professor at the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, is also the author of ‘Migrating to the movies: Cinema and Back Urna Modernity’ and the first African-American host to appear on Turner Classic Movies's ‘Silent Sunday Nights’.
She’s also co-curated a box set called 'Pioneers of African-American Cinema', which documents the origin of the Race Film Movement. Stewart has extensively worked with TCM to delve into topics related to US social and political history.
Stewart is a three-term appointee to the National Film Preservation Board, who is also known for her interest in exploring the experiences of the LGBTQ community and reflecting them in films. She and her team worked to identity-less traditional filmmaking efforts by studying the documentary, ‘Before Stonewall’, by Great Schiller, which looks back at the LGBTQ community before the 1969 Stonewall riots, according to the Division of The Humanities, The University of Chicago.
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Talking about her introduction in ‘Gone with the Wind’ upon its return to HBO Max, Stewart wrote in her op-ed for CNN on June 13, “HBO Max will bring 'Gone with The Wind' back to its line-up, and when it appears, I will provide an introduction placing the film in its multiple historical contexts. For me, this is an opportunity to think about what classic films can teach us.”
She added, “Right now, people are turning to movies for racial re-education, and the top-selling books on Amazon are about anti-racism and racial inequality. If people are really doing their homework, we may be poised to have our most informed, honest and productive national conversations yet about Black lives on screen and off.”