[2] In 2015, the National Museum of African American History and Culture officially recognized Integration Report One as the first documentary film to be directed by an African-American woman.
[1] She was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1993 alongside actress Rosalind Cash.
[3] Born Madeline Whedbee, Anderson grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she developed a passion for film and teaching.
[1] As a child during the 1930s, Anderson lived in the Barney Google Row homes, a group of dilapidated three-room houses located on an unpaved street in the 700 block of Southeast Avenue in Lancaster's southeastern 7th Ward neighborhood.
[4][5] She graduated from J. P. McCaskey High School in 1945 and enrolled in Millersville State Teacher's College to pursue teaching as a career.
She eventually received a partial scholarship at New York University (NYU), where she earned her bachelor's degree in psychology.
Still searching for work, she decided to answer a job ad as a babysitter boarder for Richard Leacock, a well-known British documentary filmmaker and a pioneer in Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité.
[1] Her learning experiences in producing and directing films were obtained while working with Richard Leacock.
She started attending courses at the Museum of Modern Art with the aims of learning all aspects of filmmaking and motion-pictures.
During this period, she worked as script clerk, and assistant editor in 1962 on Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World.
The film featured many individuals who would later become influential figures in the Civil Rights Movement, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Andrew Young and many others.
Anderson saw the racial struggles occurring and felt obliged to make the film, believing that documenting the events would inform and encourage others to act.
Luckily, she was able to collect the funds she needed by using part of her salary from Andover Productions and by asking others to donate.
Some individuals offered their help, including D. A. Pennebaker, who built a contraption that allowed her to do tracking shots, and Maya Angelou, who sang "We Shall Overcome" for the film, free of charge.
After completing the film in 1960, Anderson had a difficult time getting a distributor to pick it up so she began exhibiting it at churches and colleges.
[14] In 2015, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. recognized Integration Report One as the first documentary film to be directed by an African-American woman.
[1] I Am Somebody is about the 400 Black women workers at the Medical College Hospital of the University of South Carolina who went on strike in Charleston.
However, when she initially approached television networks with the idea, they did not give her funding because they did not see the event as important or interesting.
Anderson finally managed to acquire funding because, when she approached the networks a second time, the strike had become an international event.
At the time my concern was had I been successful in making a film that was true to their experience?From 1963 to 1968, Anderson worked for NET (National Education Television) in New York as an associate producer, writer and editor before the station became WNET.
In 1965, she became a film editor, writer and a producer-director for the Black Journal series, which discussed the racial issues and debates occurring in America at that time.
In 1969, Al Perlmutter agreed to step down and his title went to William Greaves who was originally brought on in 1966 as a part-time host for the show.
However, some individuals were against the idea because they thought that children would have a difficult time relating to the child on screen due to her ethnicity.
During this time, she also became involved in the start-up operation for WHMM-TV (now WHUT-TV) at Howard University where she taught and lectured.
The show primarily targeted children between eight and twelve, putting emphasis on inner-city youths with the aims of teaching them math and problem-solving skills.
[3] Anderson primarily seeks to identify with her subjects in order to ethically and morally represent their struggle.
This means that re-enactments of any sorts do not make a film a documentary because the footage is not real even if it is based on true events.
[23] This perspective likely emerged from the fact that, as an artist, she did not have total creative freedom because the majority of her films were made for and funded by organizations.
While Anderson was critical of the exploitative content, she nonetheless saw it as an opportunity for black filmmakers to establish themselves within Hollywood.
[24][25][26] As a filmmaker, Madeline Anderson was never particularly interested in pursuing a career in Hollywood because it did not fit with her humanitarian goals and aspirations.