okay yawl... in my quest for the perfect teaching musical, I've become obsessed with BLACK AND TAN FANTASY, starring Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra. It's got this sort of amazing intersection of influences--part Busby Berkeley, part German Expressionism.... The Kino collection, which recently released a 4-cassette collection of these jazz shorts, does not offer much in the way of liner notes for these films. (Or else, as is often the case, the liner notes have been lost through the circulation of the cassettes to careless library patrons--I'm not quite sure.) Dudley Murphy, who directed B & T, also directed EMPEROR JONES and helped Leger with BALLET MECANIQUE. That's about all I know so far...haven't had time to hep off to the library for more. But I'm wondering if anyone on the list knows anything about the intended audience of these Paramount shorts? Were they developed for white audiences interested in jazz culture? For black audiences? Were they "preview" films or main events? Were they considered avante-garde experiments or mainstream narrative films? Anyone? Meryem Ersoz University of Colorado-Denver ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite