Barbara McCullough (born 1945) is a director, production manager and visual effects artist whose directorial works are associated with the Los Angeles School of Black independent filmmaking.
[2] She attended Bishop Conaty Memorial High School[3] and after taking courses at Cal State L.A. and L.A. Community College, got into UCLA through an undergraduate affirmative action program.
Rebellion filmmakers which was dominated by women of color including Alile Sharon Larkin, Julie Dash, Jacqueline Frazier, Melvonna Ballenger, O. Funmilayo Makarah, and Carroll Parrott Blue.
[8] McCullough was fascinated by dance, but she felt that she had to look outside it for a way to express her creativity within the constraints of her role as a college student enrolled at UCLA and as the mother of two children.
in Theater Arts, Film and Television Production at UCLA, and her work secured her position as an influential representative of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers.
[7] It also expresses Afrofemcentrism, examines the location of family, destabilizes the boundary between home and work, and visualizes cinematically unfamiliar ideas of the black female imagination.
[16] McCullough explained that the woman was intended to symbolize all displaced people from developing countries who are forced to live according to the values of other cultures.
[17] Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space consists of separate episodes documenting Los Angeles artists as they create works of improvisational art.
[16] In an interview about her film, McCullough stated that "ritual is a symbolic action" capable of releasing the subject from herself to allow her to "move from one space and time into another.
[19] Unlike her more formalist work, World Saxophone Quartet would go on to be picked up by PBS and shown at international film festivals, particularly during black history month.
Art Tatum, Earl Hines and Erroll Garner were all mentors to the young Tapscott in the 1940s, when Central Avenue hosted a number of jazz clubs.
[16] The film includes a series of interviews with Tapscott, footage of his performances as a solo artist and with his combo, archival material that documents the historical contributions of African Americans to the cultural life of Los Angeles, and excerpts of a lecture on jazz and the blues that Tapscott delivered to a group of Los Angeles teachers.