Archives on the Air: Ernest Tidyman.

Dynamite Entertainment's 2016 edition
of Ernest Tidyman's Shaft (1970)

The Archives on the Air radio series on Wyoming Public Media provides brief highlights about the collections of the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center. One recent episode is on Edgar winner Ernest Tidyman (1928–84), the author of Shaft and a screenwriter on the film The French Connection. Among its holdings, the center has the original manuscript for Shaft and production files for films involving Tidyman.

And in case you want to sing along...

Happy centenary, Gordon Parks.

Today marks the centenary of Shaft director and photographer Gordon Parks, who was born today in Fort Scott, KS, in 1912. He died in 2006. The Gordon Parks Foundation has a rundown of various events and exhibitions this year in honor of Parks.

Photographer-director Gordon Parks at 100.

Gordon Parks's
autobiography, available
from MN Hist Soc P

NYC's Howard Greenberg Gallery marks the upcoming centenary of the birth of photographer and Shaft director Gordon Parks with two exhibitions opening today:

•  "Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and 'Invisible Man,'" which runs through October 27. It includes Parks's photographs published in Life at the time of the publication of Ellison's Invisible Man.

• "Gordon Parks: Centennial," which also runs through October 27, features Parks's work over 50 years, including a famous civil rights portrait that invokes Grant Wood's "American Gothic."

Other Parks exhibitions:
• "Gordon Parks: 100 Moments." Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL. Through December 1.

• "Gordon Parks: Crossroads." Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Through September 25.

New journal on black cinema.

Indiana University Press has announced that it will publish, in conjunction with IU's Black Film Center/Archive, a new scholarly journal called Black Camera, ed. Michael T. Martin (director of the archive). "Devoted to the study and documentation of the black cinematic experience," the journal will commence in fall 2009 and be published biannually. Go here for contributor guidelines.

There's been some analysis of African Americans on screen in the Journal of Popular Film and Television, such as "Shades of Black on Homicide: Life on the Street: Advances and Retreats in Portrayals of African American Women," by Thomas A. Mascaro.

About the photo: Photographer (later director) Gordon Parks, ca. 1943. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div reproduction no. LC-DIG-ppmsc-00190.