When we talk of early black cinema, presumably we have in mind what took place in our own country--in which context I'd like to share a footnote from Argentina. Jose Agustin Ferreyra, also known as "el negro Ferreyra" or "black Ferreyra," was one of the most important directors--perhaps the most important director--in Argentine silent film. He made his first film UNA NOCHE DE GARUFA (PARTY NIGHT), also known as LAS AVENTURAS DE TITO (TITO's ADVENTURES) in 1915, which is the same year, I believe, that Noble Johnson (??) made the first black American film. But there all similarity ends. Johnson and the early black US film makers were outsiders who were trying to make their voice heard--largely or at least partly in response to the blatant racism in US films such as BIRTH OF A NATION. Ferreyra was very much in the inner circle of early Argentine film. He continued to make films through 1941, made a number of important films, worked for Argentina Sono Film, the nation's most important film production company, on several occasions, and virtually every person who became important in later Argentine cinema worked in one or more of Ferreyra's films. But there is a second difference. In the two feature films I have seen by Ferreyra and in the fragments I have seen from some of his other films, there are no blacks. I don't know what to make of this. In part, I think, it reflects a different attitude toward race in Argentina and Hispanic countries in general. Ferreyra himself was a mulatto. His father was a Spanish immigrant, and his mother was the descendant of Africans. Ferreyra married a white woman and, apparently, never ran into any problems for this except when he visited the US (New York). Perhaps what we are dealing with is that there were never a lot of people of African ancestry in Argentina--there were a limited number of slaves in Buenos Aires, which is where the super- wealthy lived--and after slavery ended the Argentines of African descent intermaried with the rest of the population and became absorbed. Perhaps in the context in which Ferreyra lived and worked, one's being of part (or all) African ancestry was simply not important. Perhaps the reason no blacks appear in Ferreyra's films (the limited number I have been able to see) is simply a coincidence. Perhaps there is no exclusion. But I'm not certain. I've tried to see the rest of Ferreyra's films and have not been successful in getting access to them. (The company that once owned them seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. The films must be in someone's hands now, but I can't find whose.) So, as I said, a footnote. And one that, if nothing else, points to the difference between our own and another culture and how that difference is reflected in their films. Currie Thompson