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57-542: Polk made his feature film directorial debut with Punks (2000), an independent film that he also wrote and produced. Punks had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival . In 2004, Polk created the television series Noah's Arc , which made its debut on Logo in October 2005 and ran for two seasons. After the series' cancellation, Polk wrote, directed, and produced a film spin-off, Noah's Arc: Jumping

114-633: A series concept that again focused on the lives of several gay African-American men. The original one-hour pilot was produced independently and released as a web series in 2004, and to assist in funding each episode, the show was originally envisioned as a DVD subscription series. After the web series was well received, the series was picked up by Logo as a half-hour series. The series focused on issues like same-sex dating , same-sex marriage , HIV and AIDS awareness, infidelity , promiscuity , homophobia , gay bashing , and same-sex parenthood . The series ultimately ran for two seasons on Logo before it

171-521: A theatrical film , is a narrative film ( motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term feature film originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that included a short film and often a newsreel . Matinee programs, especially in the US and Canada, in general, also included cartoons , at least one weekly serial and, typically,

228-710: A Feature Film, and Outstanding Directing in a Feature Film. It won GLAAD Award 's for Best Feature Film (Limited Release). Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom was released on October 24, 2008, on a limited basis, at theaters in Los Angeles , New York City , Atlanta , Chicago , Palm Springs, California , and Washington, D.C. The movie showed in Ocean City, New Jersey , Detroit and San Francisco in early November. The movie then began showing at theaters in Philadelphia and Dallas in at

285-442: A UK connection, edited by Gordon, Beadle-Blair and UK Black Pride co-founder Phyll Opoku-Gyimah ; it included writers such as Yrsa Daley-Ward and was shortlisted for a 2019 Lambda Literary Award. In 2020, he and Beadle-Blair contracted the gay African-American author Larry Duplechan to write a memoir of his love of film, Movies That Made Me Gay : it was published October 2, 2023. Published on 20 October 2014, Black and Gay in

342-594: A different Passion Play in May 1903, The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ , in 32 parts, totaling 44 minutes. Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 60-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906). Similarly, the first European feature was the 90-minute film L'Enfant prodigue (France, 1907), although that was an unmodified record of a stage play; Europe's first feature adapted directly for

399-533: A feature cameo by Wanda Sykes as Noah's mother, for which she was nominated for a 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Daytime Fiction Program. In January 2021 it was awarded a GLAAD Special Recognition Award. His 10-minute short film Souljah – about a gay African former child soldier (B3/Angelica Entertainments 2007), and directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair – premiered at the London Film Festival on 30 October 2007. In July 2008 Souljah won

456-455: A feature's running time is 60 minutes or longer. The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35 mm film longer than 1,600 metres (5,200 ft), which is exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films . The term feature film came into use to refer to the main film presented in a cinema and the one which was promoted or advertised. The term was used to distinguish

513-407: A macho black British man ( Felix Dexter ) coming to terms with his long-lost Jamaican brother's homosexuality. Although it never made it beyond Channel 4's Sitcom Festival to television, The Independent praised it for offering innovative characters and situations. It also starred Terry Alderton . Gordon script-edited two seasons of Patrik-Ian Polk 's television show Noah's Arc (2005–6) for

570-431: A nightclub. The graphic novella explores issues around HIV, safe sex, PEP (post-exposure prophylaxis), PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) and sero-discordancy in a comical way, in street-level language and urban slang. Gordon received an Arts Council grant to make copies available free to gay urban young people and sexual health charities. On 28 April 2016 Gordon's short HIV-themed comedy play Yemi and Femi go da Chemist

627-555: A radical representation of romantic love between black men in slavery times. Patrik-Ian Polk has called it 'an all-out masterpiece'; Michael Eric Dyson has haled it as 'a dazzling work of imagination'; and Audre Lorde biographer Alexis De Veaux described it as 'a riveting, masterful work'. It was favourably reviewed in the London Financial Times , which said it was 'a damning indictment of America's racist history... often deeply moving and gripping'. On 25 April 2019 it won

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684-453: A second feature-length film on weekends. The first narrative feature film was the 60-minute The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906, Australia). Other early feature films include Les Misérables (1909, U.S.), L'Inferno , Defence of Sevastopol , The Adventures of Pinocchio (1911), Oliver Twist (American version), Oliver Twist (British version), Richard III , From the Manger to

741-531: Is any more or less talented than I am.... What I am saying is doors were opened to Greg that just simply were not open to me; he was given access that I wasn't. Fifteen years in, I've had to carve out a career of independent work while a lot of my white gay counterparts and white straight counterparts [are] doing the kinds of things that I just simply have not even been given the opportunity to talk about doing. Feature film A feature film or feature-length film (often abbreviated to feature ), also called

798-522: Is truly breathtaking, in scale, and in ambition. I cried like a baby at times, and as events rapidly escalated in the novel's final act, I just couldn't put it down" and in the Huffington Post: "...a novel that defies categorization. It's a mashup of the immigrant saga, a chilling gangster thriller, a state-of-the-nation novel, a coming-of-age story and an intimate family portrait with a harrowing war crime at its heart. The fact that Gordon never once drops

855-498: The Arcola Theatre ; the playtext was published by Team Angelica, as was the playtext of Slap . Gordon was script consultant and associate producer on Patrik-Ian Polk 's feature film Blackbird (2014) – a Tall Skinny Black Boy/Hicks Media co-production, written by Rikki Beadle-Blair and Polk, adapted from Larry Duplechan 's novel of that name, and starring Mo'Nique and Isiah Washington . Gordon's fourth novel, Faggamuffin ,

912-647: The Publishing Triangle 's prestigious Ferro-Grumley Award for best LGBTQ fiction. Hark , pub Sept 2020, is a gay teen interracial romance set in a present-day extrapolation of the Southern Gothic landscape of Drapetomania . It contains a supernatural element exploring American's racially haunted past, and the turning of lynching photographs into postcards as souvenirs. Award-winning black gay fantasy writer Craig Laurance Gidney called it 'audaciously provocative, sexy and spooky all at once. And very much of

969-744: The Sundance Film Festival . The film was chosen to open the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival . In November 2001, Punks was released theatrically at the Quad in New York City . It was nominated for the GLAAD Media Award and the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award in 2002. Punks later had its television premiere on Logo on August 7, 2011. After Punks , Polk began developing

1026-526: The Broom , which was released theatrically in 2008. His subsequent feature films, The Skinny , starring Jussie Smollett , and Blackbird , starring Mo'Nique , Julian Walker and Isaiah Washington , were released in 2012 and 2015, following festival runs. Born in 1973 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi , Polk was interested in television and movies as a child, notably Spike Lee 's 1986 film She's Gotta Have It . He later attended Brandeis University , where he

1083-514: The Corbett-Jeffries Fight and The Jeffries-Sharkey Fight (1899). Some consider the 100-minute The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight to be the first documentary feature film, but it is more accurately characterized as a sports program as it included the full unedited boxing match. In 1900, the documentary film Army Life was produced by Robert Paul . It was a programme of 33 short films, with a total running time of around 75 minutes, following

1140-714: The Cross , Cleopatra (1912), Quo Vadis? (1913), Cabiria (1914) and The Birth of a Nation (1915). The notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute , a feature film runs for more than 40 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild asserts that

1197-443: The Manger to the Cross , Cleopatra and Richard III (all 1912). Actor Frederick Warde starred in some of these adaptations. The first Asian feature was Japan 's The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara (1912), the first Indian feature was Raja Harishchandra (1913), China 's first feature film was Zhang Shichuan's Nan Fu Nan Qi (1913), the first South American feature was Brazil 's O Crime dos Banhados (1913), and

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1254-472: The U.S. and Japan alternated as leaders in the quantity of feature film production. Since 1971, the country with the highest feature output has been India, which produces a thousand films in more than twelve Indian languages each year. In 1927, Warner Bros. released the first feature-length film with sound, The Jazz Singer , whose audio track was recorded with a proprietary technology called Vitaphone . The film's success persuaded other studios to go to

1311-567: The UK was co-edited with Rikki Beadle-Blair for their Team Angelica imprint. Its 352 pages of poems, memoirs, fictional stories and essays exploring the lives of black gay men with some connection to the United Kingdom includes writers, artists and activists such as Leee John , Travis Alabanza , Dean Atta , Adam Lowe , David McAlmont , Bisi Alimi , black British photographer Robert Taylor , Topher Campbell and Jide Macaulay . In 2009 he co-wrote

1368-513: The US cable channel Logo . He wrote two episodes of the second season,( Desperado and Under Pressure ), and across 2007 co-storylined (with Polk and Q. Allan Brocka ) the spin-off feature-film, subsequently co-writing the screenplay with Polk. The film, Noah's Arc: Jumping The Broom , was given a limited release in six American cities, where it played to sold-out houses at the end of October 2008 and recouped $ 500,000 in ticket sales alone. The "Jumping The Broom" script that Gordon and Polk wrote

1425-515: The United States and France, but were released in individual (short film) scenes. This left exhibitors the option of playing them alone, to view an incomplete combination of some films, or to run them all together as a short film series. Early features were mostly documentary-style films of noteworthy events. Some of the earliest feature-length productions were films of boxing matches, such as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897), Reproduction of

1482-606: The Wind . Digital Video (or DV) has quickly changed how most films are made. First used to create special effects and animated movies, digital cameras became more common on film sets in the late 1990s. In 2002, George Lucas ' Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones became the first major studio film shot primarily on digital video. The ability to instantly play back footage and quickly transfer footage to computers for editing helped to speed up post-production time. Digital film making

1539-568: The award for Best Short Film at the Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival . April 2009 it won Best International Short at the Toronto Reelworld Film Festival . It was directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair for Team Angelica Productions and produced by Beadle-Blair, Gordon and Carleen Beadle. In 2011, with Rikki Beadle-Blair he established the radical queer-of-colour-focused imprint Team Angelica Publishing. Its first book

1596-575: The ball makes Souljah a sprawling, visually arresting masterpiece." On 4 March 2015 it was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award . Yemi and Femi are cartoon characters created by Gordon ('my lil' nephews'), British-Nigerian gay teen clubkid best friends, who first appeared in the graphic novella Yemi & Femi's Fun Night Out . Published in September 2015, it is a 42-page black-and-white graphic novella about Yemi and Femi and Femi's boyfriend Mixtape, and their adventures one night after being thrown out of

1653-422: The considerable expense of adding microphones to their sets, and scramble to start producing their own " talkies ". One of the next major advancements made in movie production was color film . Even before color was a possibility in movies, early film makers were interested in how color could enhance their stories. Early techniques included hand tinting : painting each frame by hand. Cheaper and more widely used

1710-494: The end of November and performed above expectations, with $ 30,336 per screen average that IndieWire dubbed "astounding". Despite this, the film received poor reviews from mainstream film critics; Time Out called it a "silly soaper", and Variety described it as "a lame feature" that was "blandly staged". The New York Times called it an "agreeable melodrama". In 2012, Polk released his third feature film, The Skinny , which he wrote, directed, and produced. The film tells

1767-757: The feature films Fit , KickOff , Bashment , and the hour-long film Free (2014) (all Team Angelica productions). 2012–017 Gordon and Beadle-Blair co-mentored Angelic Tales at the Theatre Royal Stratford East , a lengthy development project for new writers culminating in two-week-long seasons of staged readings on the theatre's main stage. Several of the plays they developed, such as Somalia Seaton's Crowning Glory (2013), Lynette Linton 's Step (2013) and Alexis Gregory 's Slap (2018) have gone on to full productions and/or tours. In 2017 he dramaturged Linton's exploration of mixed race British identity, Lightie , which played to sold-out audiences at

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1824-719: The film with Rikki Beadle-Blair . The film had a successful run on the film festival circuit, winning awards at several LGBT-oriented festivals, including Outflix Memphis, Atlanta 's Out On Film Festival, and the Crossroads Film Festival in Polk's native Mississippi. The film was the closing night gala screening for Los Angeles' Pan African Film Festival (PAFF), where it won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature Film. Blackbird received mixed reviews from critics upon release. The Hollywood Reporter called it "too all over

1881-419: The first African feature was South Africa 's De Voortrekkers (1916). By 1915, over 600 feature films were produced annually in the United States. It is often incorrectly cited that The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first American feature film. The most prolific year of U.S. feature production was 1921, with 682 releases; the lowest number of releases was in 1963, with 213. Between 1922 and 1970,

1938-697: The first ever gay African memoir, Lives of Great Men by Chike Frankie Edozien . It was favourably reviewed in the London Financial Times and won the Best Gay Memoir/Non Fiction Lambda Literary Award in 2018. It went on to be republished by Jacana Books in South Africa, in July 2018, and by Ouida Books in Nigeria. In February 2018 they published Sista! , an anthology of writings by same-gender-loving women of African/Caribbean descent with

1995-453: The formation in 2020 of the queer carnival activist group Faggamuffin Bloc Party . On 22 September 2014 Gordon's sixth novel, Souljah , was published by Team Angelica. It's an extrapolation of characters and situations first presented in the award-winning short film of the same name. It was favourably reviewed by ka-os.blogspot.com: "this is a story that deserves everyone's attention. Souljah

2052-453: The longer film from the short films (referred to as shorts) typically presented before the main film, such as newsreels , serials , animated cartoons , live-action comedies and documentaries . There was no sudden increase in the running times of films to the present-day definitions of feature-length; the "featured" film on a film program in the early 1910s gradually expanded from two to three to four reels. Early features had been produced in

2109-473: The map to take seriously". The New York Times said that the film has an "impressive, palpable conviction", although it ultimately "suffers from soapy excesses and narrative disjunctures". In 2017, Polk joined Being Mary Jane as a producer and writer. In 2020, he started co-producing the Starz show  P-Valley . Polk is openly gay , which has greatly influenced his work; in discussing his inspiration for

2166-436: The pragmatic sex education that few others would provide" —Mikelle Street of The Advocate on Polk's career (2020). Polk made his feature film directorial debut with Punks (2000), an independent film that he also wrote and produced. The film starred Rockmond Dunbar , Renoly Santiago , Jazzmun , and Devon Odessa , and focused on the stories of a group of gay African-American friends. Punks premiered at

2223-520: The screen , Les Misérables , came from France in 1909. The first Russian feature was Defence of Sevastopol in 1911. Early Italian features included L'Inferno (1911), Quo Vadis? , The Last Days of Pompeii (1913) and Cabiria (1914). The first UK features were the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India (1912), filmed in Kinemacolor and Oliver Twist (also 1912). The first American features were Oliver Twist , From

2280-464: The screenplay for the short film Manali Cream (dir. Navdeep Kandola ). In summer 2009 his one-act play Afro-Pik - a play about Black Man Hair , featuring Fisayo Akintunde was premiered at the Central School of Speech and Drama summer school. In summer 2010 his short play Work! premiered at Theatre503 as part of Golden Delilah 's production, "7:1 Beyond Control". Gordon was art designer on

2337-475: The series Noah's Arc in an interview, Polk said: "I wanted to see black gay characters and there were none on TV. So I decided rather than complain about it, I'd do it myself." Polk lives in Harlem . Polk has spoken out about lack of diversity in the entertainment industry, contrasting his struggle as a black gay man with his white , and also gay, counterparts: The same year Punks premiered at Sundance, there

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2394-521: The story of five friends who are Brown University classmates—four gay men and one lesbian—as they reunite in New York City for a tumultuous Gay Pride weekend. Following a festival run and limited theatrical release, the film premiered on Logo on July 8, 2012. His third feature film as a writer and director, Blackbird , starring Mo'Nique and Isaiah Washington , was released in April 2015. Polk co-wrote

2451-529: The third with Millivres/Prowler). In 1995 he directed his play Wheels of Steel , about a closeted young thug paralysed in a joyriding accident and his flamboyant male nurse, at the Gate Theatre , London. It starred Rikki Beadle-Blair and Karl Collins , who went on to play each other's estranged husbands in Beadle-Blair's Channel 4 series Metrosexuality . He wrote a 1999 sitcom pilot The Melting Pot about

2508-525: The titular characters go back in time and encounter a gay Caribbean couple having a secret affair in 1950s Notting Hill, was presented as a staged reading as part of Tom Ratcliffe's Platform festival at the King's Head Theatre , dir. Rikki Beadle-Blair. Published in May 2018, Drapetomania is a 500-page novel set in the American South. Ten years in the writing, it is an epic tale of black freedom, uprising, and

2565-604: The training of British soldiers. Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth (1901) ran for 35 minutes, "six times longer than any previous Australian film", and has been called "possibly the first feature-length documentary made in Australia". American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play titled Lubin's Passion Play in January 1903 in 31 parts, totaling about 60 minutes. The French company Pathé Frères released

2622-419: The ways people received and watched media. It also gave viewers access to huge amounts of online content on demand. John R. Gordon John R. Gordon (born 1964) is a British writer. His work – novels, plays, screenplays and biography - deals with the intersections of race, sexuality and class. With Rikki Beadle-Blair he founded and runs queer-of-colour-centric indie press Team Angelica. Although he

2679-528: The zeitgeist'; Blackbird author Larry Duplechan described it as 'a welcome addition to the tradition.' It was listed as a Book of the Year by Books for Keeps . With queer Rwandan performance artist Urban Wolf, in 2022 Gordon created a series of interlinked works, featuring the same cast of Black queer characters, set in 'the endz' in South London: the 40-minute grime audio drama Scooters, Shooters & Shottas:

2736-542: Was toning : dying the film in a single color, used in many films in the 1920s. The film processing lab Technicolor developed the Three-Tone coloring technique that became the standard for color film. It was a complex, time consuming, and expensive process that many movie studios were not eager to try. One of the early adopters of the three-strip process was Disney . Some of the most notable films Technicolor processed with three-strip were The Wizard of Oz and Gone with

2793-521: Was Beadle-Blair's What I Learned Today . In 2013 they published the well-received and groundbreaking short-story collection Fairytales for Lost Children by gay Somali author Diriye Osman . On 8 October 2014 Fairytales for Lost Children won the Polari First Book Prize. In 2015 they published Roz Kaveney 's novel, Tiny Pieces of Skull , which went on to win the 2016 Best Trans Fiction Lambda Literary Award. In November 2017 they published

2850-476: Was a "white person from a white suburb", according to Gordon, in the 1980s he became deeply interested in black cultural figures such as James Baldwin , Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon , and they have influenced his work ever since. Between 1993 and 2001 Gordon published three groundbreaking novels of Black gay British life, Black Butterflies , Skin Deep , and Warriors & Outlaws (the first two with Gay Men's Press,

2907-403: Was another film there by a white gay filmmaker called The Broken Hearts Club . The films are eerily similar except The Broken Hearts Club is a mostly white cast. Both films were well received, but [its director] Greg Berlanti — who is a friend of mine, very talented and this in no way is to take anything away from him — has gone on to become a premiere television producer. I'm not saying Greg

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2964-548: Was canceled in 2005. Polk's second feature film, Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom , a spin-off of Noah's Arc , was released in 2008. It was written in collaboration with fellow writer from the series John R. Gordon , and picks up after the cliffhanger at the end of the second season. The film focuses on the marriage and wedding of the main character, Noah Nicolson, and his boyfriend Wade Robinson at Martha's Vineyard . The film received three NAACP Image Award nominations: Outstanding Independent Feature Film, Outstanding Writing in

3021-499: Was given a big boost in 2005 when the Digital Cinema Initiative created a guide for manufacturers to create a universal standard, to make the technologies more compatible with each other and more user friendly. Shooting movies on digital also led to new technologies for distributing films. Titan A.E. , released in 2000, was the first feature film to be released for viewing over the internet. Digital distribution changed

3078-525: Was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, as was the film itself in the Best Independent Feature category. In April 2009 the film won the GLAAD Best (limited release) Feature Film Award. In 2020 he co-executive produced Noah's Arc: The "Rona Chronicles" , a reunion episode written and directed by Polk, and presented by Gilead Sciences on 5 July. It starred all original cast members and included

3135-550: Was premiered at Team Angelica's Boom! event as part of the AmBush at London's highly respected Bush Theatre , to an enthusiastic response from the sold-out audience. He and Beadle-Blair co-dramaturged the event, which showcased thirty-eight writers over two nights. The text of the play was included in the Team Angelica anthology, Black and Gay in the UK . On May 9, 2023 Gordon's one-act play, Yemi & Femi Go Windrush , which sees

3192-581: Was published in 2012. It is about a gay Jamaican reggae producer - Cutty, a character who first appeared in The Melting Pot - on the run from the authorities. On 3 November 2015 a theatrical version of Faggamuffin , directed by Rikki Beadle-Blair and starring Nathan Clough , Marlon Kameka and Savannah Rae , was presented at the Bush Theatre as part of the Gay Buddies Week . The novel inspired

3249-565: Was the arts editor of the college newspaper. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southern Mississippi , then went on to study at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinema and Television. "Polk has built for himself a full collection of work that was formative for a generation of Black gay men. [..] Through these works, as well as the work he still does, he allowed Black gay men to not only see versions of themselves but also provided them digestible venues for

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