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An anthology film (also known as an omnibus film, package film, or portmanteau film) is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event (often a turning point). Sometimes each one is directed by a different director. These differ from "revue films" such as Paramount on Parade (1930)—which were common in Hollywood in the early sound film era to show off their stars and related vaudeville-style acts—composite films, and compilation films.

Sometimes there is a theme, such as a place (e.g. New York Stories, Paris, je t'aime), a person (e.g. Four Rooms), or a thing (e.g. Twenty Bucks, Coffee and Cigarettes), that is present in each story and serves to bind them together. Two of the earliest films to use the form were Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel (1932), released by MGM with an all-star cast; and Paramount's If I Had a Million (also 1932), featuring segments helmed by a number of directors.

European directors such as Roberto Rossellini directed anthology films such as L'Amore (segments: "Il Miracolo" and "Una voce umana") (1948), Les Sept péchés capitaux (segment: "Envie, L'Envy") (1952), Siamo donne (segment: "Ingrid Bergman") (1953), and Amori di mezzo secolo (segment: "Napoli 1943") (1954). American studios soon followed with films like Quartet (1948) based on stories by W. Somerset Maugham. This led to two sequels, Trio (1950) and Encore (1951), as well as imitators like O. Henry's Full House (1952) and Actors and Sin (1952).

Sometimes there is one "top-level" story, a framing device, which leads into the various "sub-stories", as in Tales of Manhattan (1942), Creepshow, Flesh and Fantasy (1943), Dead of Night (1945), and The Illustrated Man (1968). The former helped to popularise the format for horror films—although they had existed as far back as Unheimliche Geschichten (1919)—and British company Amicus made several such films in the 1960s and 1970s. Another variation is when different sub-narratives share a common incident (usually a turning point), as in Amores perros.

Michael Jackson's 1988 musical-fantasy film Moonwalker consisted of six short films, each based on a song from his album Bad. The centerpiece of the film is the short film Smooth Criminal which is based on the song by the same name. Joe Pesci co-stars in Smooth Criminal. The film was never released in theaters in the United States but it did run in theaters elsewhere.

The Red Violin (1998) could also be considered a portmanteau film, since the storylines revolve around the various owners of a precious sixteenth-century violin through the centuries. Similarly, 1964's The Yellow Rolls-Royce follows the owners of the titular vehicle.

Gene Kelly's 1956 all-dance film Invitation to the Dance consisted of three distinct stories, each different in tone and with its own plot line. Kelly appeared in each of the stories.

Four Rooms is also an anthology film which follows the protagonist and his misadventures in four different rooms of a hotel. The four different segments (or rooms) were all directed by different directors.

Mohsen Abdolvahab's debut Please Do Not Disturb (2010) was a widely acclaimed tri-segmented Iranian anthology film.

Other anthology films are Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her and Nine Lives both by writer-director Rodrigo García.

In India[link]

Sirikkathe, a Tamil film released in 1939, was the first anthology film in India.

Chithramela, a Malayalam film directed by T. S. Muthaiah, and Kathasangama, a Kannada film directed by Puttanna Kanagal in 1975, are some of the earliest portmanteau films from India.

Recent Anthology films from Bollywood include Ram Gopal Varma's Darna Mana Hai and its sequel Darna Zaroori Hai. Dus Kahaniyaan is also a noted portmanteau film from Bollywood.

In Tamil movies, Aayutha Ezhuthu, directed by Mani Ratnam and starring Suriya, R. Madhavan, and Siddharth in the lead roles, is also an anthology film.

An Indian Malayalam movie, Kerala Cafe (2009) includes 10 different stories packed up in a single movie by Ranjith, a well known Malayalam film director. The ten stories are directed by ten directors and more importantly, every film has a different team for its making. Yauvanam/Vandikkari (1974) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Naalu Pennungal (2007) are two other portmanteau films in Malayalam.

In Telugu movies, Vedam is a commercially successful Anthology directed by Radhakrishna Jagarlamudi, which tried to combine 5 different plots with the grand theme of redemption among a section of indifferent Indians, looking to attain success & fame through shortcuts. It was remade in Tamil as Vaanam in 2011.

Package film[link]

Package film is a film consisting of several short films, often a feature-length compilation of short subjects in animation. Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Malayalam film Naalu Pennungal (Four Women; 2007) is based on four different short stories, but had common elements and characters. Marathi film Gandha (The Smell; 2009), by Sachin Kundalkar is also a compilation of three short stories.

See also[link]

• Composite film
• Hyperlink cinema
• Frame tale
• List of animated package films

James Baldwin
Baldwin in 1971
Born	James Arthur Baldwin (1924-08-02)August 2, 1924 Harlem, New York, U.S.
Died	December 1, 1987(1987-12-01) (aged 63) Saint-Paul de Vence, France
Occupation	Writer, Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Activist
Nationality	American
Genres	Fiction, non-fiction
Influences Henry James, Black church, Bessie Smith, Miles Davis, Beauford Delaney, Elia Kazan, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers
Influenced Suzan-Lori Parks, Spike Lee, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis, bell hooks, Huey P. Newton, Toni Morrison, Susan Straight, Eldridge Cleaver, Rip Torn

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

Baldwin's essays, such as the collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America, vis-à-vis their inevitable if unnameable tensions with personal identity, assumptions, uncertainties, yearning, and questing.^[1] Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976).

His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only blacks yet also of male homosexuals—depicting as well some internalized impediments to such individuals' quest for acceptance—namely in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), written well before the equality of homosexuals was widely espoused in America.^[2] Baldwin's best-known novel is his first, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).

Early life[link]

When Baldwin was an infant, his mother, Emma Berdis Jones, divorced his father because of drug abuse and moved to Harlem, New York, where she married a preacher, David Baldwin. The family was very poor. James spent much time caring for his several younger brothers and sisters. At age ten, he was beaten by a gang of police officers. His adoptive father, whom James in essays called simply his father, appears to have treated James—versus James's siblings—with singular harshness.

His stepfather died in summer of 1943 soon before James turned 19. The day of the funeral was James's 19th birthday, his father's last child was born, and Harlem rioted, the portrait opening his essay "Notes of a Native Son".^[3] The quest to answer or explain familial and social repudiation—and attain a sense of self both coherent and benevolent—became a motif in Baldwin's writing.

Schooling[link]

James attended the prestigious, mostly Jewish DeWitt Clinton High School, in the Bronx, where, along with Richard Avedon, he worked on the school magazine—Baldwin was its literary editor.^[4] After high school, Baldwin studied at The New School, finding an intellectual community.

Religion[link]

At age 14, Baldwin joined the Pentecostal Church and became a Pentecostal preacher. The difficulties of life, as well as his abusive stepfather, who was a preacher, delivered him to the church. During a euphoric prayer meeting, Baldwin converted, and soon became junior minister at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly. He drew larger crowds than his father did.

At 17, Baldwin came to view Christianity as falsely premised, however, and later regarded his time in the pulpit as a remedy to his personal crises. His early experience with the church influenced Baldwin's writing.^[5]

In The Fire Next Time, Baldwin discusses his visit with Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, who inquired about Baldwin's religious beliefs. Baldwin answered, "I left the church 20 years ago and haven't joined anything since." Elijah asked, "And what are you now?" Baldwin explained, "I? Now? Nothing. I'm a writer. I like doing things alone."^[6]

Baldwin viewed Muhammad's beliefs about white devils to be just as outrageous as biblical beliefs. Baldwin also wrote that, "being in the pulpit, was like being in the theatre; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion worked."

Though he was irreligious, it's not clear if Baldwin was an atheist. He never identified himself as such, and didn't clarify if he still believed in God despite leaving Christianity. He retained enough interest in religion that he was recorded singing "Precious Lord," a famous gospel song composed by Thomas A. Dorsey.

Baldwin often criticized Christianity for, in his mind, supporting slavery. He castigated blacks who used religion as an excuse to accept oppression. However he also praised religion for inspiring African Americans to fight against racism.^[7]

Baldwin once wrote: "If the concept of God has any use, it is to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God can't do that, it's time we got rid of him."^[8]

Life in Greenwich Village[link]

When Baldwin was 15, his running buddy, Emile Capouya, at DeWitt Clinton High School had skipped school one day and, in Greenwich Village, met one Beauford Delaney, a painter. Emile gave James the address, and suggested a visit. James, who worked at a sweatshop on Canal Street, in the general area, and who dreaded going home after school, visited Beauford—at 181 Greene Street—who became a mentor to James, his first realization that a black person could be an artist. And so his social life in the Village began.^[9] While working odd jobs, he wrote short stories, essays, and book reviews, some of them collected in the volume Notes of a Native Son (1955).

Baldwin's expatriation[link]

James Baldwin, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1955

During his teenage years in Harlem and Greenwich Village, Baldwin began to recognize his own homosexuality. In 1948, disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and homosexuals, Baldwin left the United States and departed to Paris, France. His flight was not just a desire to distance himself from American prejudice. He fled in order to see himself and his writing beyond an African American context and to be read as not "merely a Negro; or, even, merely a Negro writer".^[10] Also, he left the United States desiring to come to terms with his sexual ambivalence and flee the hopelessness that many young African American men like himself succumbed to in New York.^[11]

In Paris, Baldwin was soon involved in the cultural radicalism of the Left Bank. His work started to be published in literary anthologies, notably Zero,^[12] which was edited by his friend Themistocles Hoetis and which had already published essays by Richard Wright.

He would live as an expatriate in France for most of his later life. He would also spend some time in Switzerland and Turkey.^[13][14] During his life and after it, Baldwin would be seen not only as an influential African American writer but also as an influential exile writer, particularly because of his numerous experiences outside of the United States and the impact of these experiences on Baldwin's life and his writing.

Literary career[link]

Baldwin with Shakespeare by Allan Warren

In 1953, Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, was published. Baldwin's first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son appeared two years later. Baldwin continued to experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry and plays as well as the fiction and essays for which he was known.

Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, stirred controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content.^[15] Baldwin was again resisting labels with the publication of this work:^[16] despite the reading public's expectations that he would publish works dealing with the African American experience, Giovanni's Room is exclusively about white characters.^[16] Baldwin's next two novels, Another Country and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, are sprawling, experimental works^[17] dealing with black and white characters and with heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual characters.^[18] These novels struggle to contain the turbulence of the 1960s: they are saturated with a sense of violent unrest and outrage.

Baldwin's lengthy essay Down at the Cross (frequently called The Fire Next Time after the title of the book in which it was published)^[19] similarly showed the seething discontent of the 1960s in novel form. The essay was originally published in two oversized issues of The New Yorker and landed Baldwin on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 while Baldwin was touring the South speaking about the restive Civil Rights movement. The essay talked about the uneasy relationship between Christianity and the burgeoning Black Muslim movement. Baldwin's next book-length essay, No Name in the Street, also discussed his own experience in the context of the later 1960s, specifically the assassinations of three of his personal friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Baldwin's writings of the 1970s and 1980s have been largely overlooked by critics, though even these texts are beginning to receive attention.^[20] Eldridge Cleaver's vicious homophobic attack on Baldwin in Soul on Ice, and Baldwin's return to southern France contributed to the sense that he was not in touch with his readership. Always true to his own convictions rather than to the tastes of others, Baldwin continued to write what he wanted to write. His two novels written in the 1970s, If Beale Street Could Talk and Just Above My Head, placed a strong emphasis on the importance of black families, and he concluded his career by publishing a volume of poetry, Sonny's Blues, as well as another book-length essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which was an extended meditation inspired by the Atlanta Child Murders of the early 1980s.

Social and political activism[link]

Baldwin returned to the United States in the summer of 1957 while the Civil Rights Act of that year was being debated in Congress. He had been powerfully moved by the image of a young girl braving a mob in an attempt to desegregate schools in Charlotte, N.C., and Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv had suggested he report on what was happening in the American south. Baldwin was nervous about the trip but he made it, interviewing people in Charlotte, Atlanta (where he met Martin Luther King), and Montgomery, Alabama. The result was two essays, one published in Harper's magazine ("The Hard Kind of Courage"), the other in Partisan Review ("Nobody Knows My Name"). Subsequent Baldwin articles on the movement appeared in Mademoiselle, Harper's, the New York Times Magazine, and the New Yorker, where in 1962 he published the essay he called "Down at the Cross" and the New Yorker called "Letter from a Region of My Mind". Along with a shorter essay from The Progressive, the essay became The Fire Next Time.^[21]

While he wrote about the movement, Baldwin aligned himself with the ideals of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963 he conducted a lecture tour of the South for CORE, traveling to locations like Durham and Greensboro, North Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. During the tour, he lectured to students, white liberals, and anyone else listening about his racial ideology, an ideological position between the "muscular approach" of Malcolm X and the nonviolent program of Martin Luther King Jr..^[22]

By the Spring of 1963, Baldwin had become so much a spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement that for its May 17 issue on the turmoil in Birmingham, Alabama, Time magazine put James Baldwin on the cover. "There is not another writer," said Time, "who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South."^[23] In a cable Baldwin sent to Attorney General Robert Kennedy during the crisis, Baldwin blamed the violence in Birmingham on the FBI, J.Edgar Hoover, Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland, and President Kennedy for failing to use "the great prestige of his office as the moral forum which it can be." Attorney General Kennedy invited Baldwin to meet with him over breakfast, and that meeting was followed up with a second, when Kennedy met with Baldwin and others Baldwin had invited to Kennedy's Manhattan apartment. The delegation included Kenneth Clark, a sociologist who had played a key role in the Brown v. Board of Education decision; actor Harry Belafonte, singer Lena Horne, writer Lorraine Hansberry, and activists from civil rights organizations.^[24] Although most of the attendees of this meeting left feeling "devastated," the meeting was an important one in voicing the concerns of the civil rights movement and it provided exposure of the civil rights issue not just as a political issue but also as a moral issue.^[25]

Baldwin also made a prominent appearance at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, with Belafonte and long time friends Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando.^[26] After a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church not long after the March on Washington, Baldwin called for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience in response to this "terrifying crisis." He traveled to Selma, Alabama, where SNCC had organized a voter registration drive; he watched mothers with babies and elderly men and women standing in long lines for hours, as armed deputies and state troopers stood by—or intervened to smash a reporter's camera or use cattle prods on SNCC workers. After his day of watching, he spoke in a crowded church, blaming Washington --"the good white people on the hill." Returning to Washington, he told a New York Post reporter the federal government could protect Negroes—it could send federal troops into the South. He blamed the Kennedys for not acting.^[27] In March 1964, Baldwin joined marchers who walked 50 miles from Selma, Alabama, to the capitol in Montgomery under the protection of federal troops.^[28]

Nonetheless, he rejected the label civil rights activist, or that he had participated in a civil rights movement, instead agreeing with Malcolm X's assertion that if one is a citizen, one should not have to fight for one's civil rights. In a 1979 speech at UC Berkeley, he called it, instead, "the latest slave rebellion."^[29]

In 1968, Baldwin signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.^[30]

Inspiration and relationships[link]

Richard Wright (1908-1960) photographed in 1939 by Carl Van Vechten

A great influence on Baldwin was the painter Beauford Delaney. In The Price of the Ticket (1985), Baldwin describes Delaney as "the first living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognized as my teacher and I as his pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow."

Later support came from Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest black writer in the world." Wright and Baldwin became friends, and Wright helped Baldwin secure the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin's essay "Notes of a Native Son" and his essay collection Notes of a Native Son allude to Wright's novel Native Son. In Baldwin's 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel", however, Baldwin indicated that Native Son, like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, lacked credible characters and psychological complexity, and the two authors' friendship ended.^[31] Interviewed by Julius Lester,^[32] however, Baldwin explained, "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself."

In 1949 Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger, age 17, though Happersberger's marriage three years later left Baldwin distraught.^[33] Happersberger died on August 21, 2010 in Switzerland.

Baldwin was a close friend of the singer, pianist, and civil rights activist Nina Simone. With Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry, Baldwin helped awaken Simone to the civil rights movement then gelling. Baldwin also offered her with literary references influential on her later work.

Baldwin influenced the work of French painter Philippe Derome, whom he met in Paris in the early 1960s. Baldwin also knew Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet (with whom he campaigned on behalf of the Black Panther Party), Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Rip Torn, Alex Haley, Miles Davis, Amiri Baraka, Martin Luther King, Jr., Margaret Mead, Josephine Baker, Allen Ginsberg and Maya Angelou.^[34]

Maya Angelou called Baldwin her "friend and brother", and credited him for "setting the stage" for her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.^[35]

Death[link]

Early on December 1, 1987^[36][37] (some sources say late on November 30^[38][39]) Baldwin died from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.^[40][41] He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York City.

Legacy[link]

Baldwin's influence on other writers has been profound: Toni Morrison edited the Library of America two volume editions of Baldwin's fiction and essays, and a recent collection of critical essays links these two writers.

One of Baldwin's richest short stories, "Sonny's Blues", appears in many anthologies of short fiction used in introductory college literature classes.

In 1987, Kevin Brown, a photo-journalist from Baltimore, founded the National James Baldwin Literary Society. The group organizes free public events celebrating Baldwin's life and legacy.

In 1992, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, established the James Baldwin Scholars program, an urban outreach initiative, in honor of Baldwin, who taught at Hampshire in the early 1980s. The JBS Program provides talented students of color from underserved communities an opportunity to develop and improve the skills necessary for college success through coursework and tutorial support for one transitional year, after which Baldwin scholars may apply for full matriculation to Hampshire or any other four-year college program.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed James Baldwin on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.^[42]

In 2005 the USPS created a first-class postage stamp dedicated to him which featured him on the front, and on the back of the peeling paper had a short biography.

Works[link]

Baldwin (right of center) with Hollywood actors Charlton Heston and Marlon Brando at the 1963 Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. Sidney Poitier (rear) and Harry Belafonte (right of Brando) can also be seen in the crowd.

• Go Tell It on the Mountain (semi-autobiographical novel; 1953)
• The Amen Corner (play; 1954)
• Notes of a Native Son (essays; 1955)
• Giovanni's Room (novel; 1956)
• Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (essays; 1961)
• Another Country (novel; 1962)
• A Talk to Teachers (essay; 1963)
• The Fire Next Time (essays; 1963)
• Blues for Mister Charlie (play; 1964)
• Going to Meet the Man (stories; 1965)
• Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (novel; 1968)
• No Name in the Street (essays; 1972)
• If Beale Street Could Talk (novel; 1974)
• The Devil Finds Work (essays; 1976)
• Just Above My Head (novel; 1979)
• Jimmy's Blues (poems; 1983)
• The Evidence of Things Not Seen (essays; 1985)
• The Price of the Ticket (essays; 1985)
• Harlem Quartet (novel; 1987)
• The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (essays; 2010)

Together with others:

• Nothing Personal (with Richard Avedon, photography) (1964)
• A Rap on Race (with Margaret Mead) (1971)
• One Day When I Was Lost (orig.: A. Haley; 1972)
• A Dialogue (with Nikki Giovanni) (1973)
• Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood (with Yoran Cazac, 1976)
• Native Sons (with Sol Stein, 2004)

Notes[link]

Published as[link]

• Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, Another Country, Going to Meet the Man (Toni Morrison, ed.) (Library of America, 1998) ISBN 978-1-883011-51-2.
• Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, The Devil Finds Work, Other Essays (Toni Morrison, ed.) (Library of America, 1998) ISBN 978-1-883011-52-9

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James Baldwin

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: James Baldwin

• Altman, Elias. "Watered Whiskey: James Baldwin's Uncollected Writings" April 13, 2011. The Nation.
• Jordan Elgrably (Spring 1984). "James Baldwin, The Art of Fiction No. 78". Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/the-art-of-fiction-no-78-james-baldwin. 
• Gwin, Minrose. "Southernspaces.org" March 11, 2008. Southern Spaces
• James Baldwin Photographs and Papers Selected manuscripts, correspondence, and photographic portraits from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
• Works by or about James Baldwin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Comprehensive Resource of James Baldwin Information
• James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket distributed by California Newsreel
• "An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis" by James Baldwin
• Baldwin's American Masters page
• James Baldwin at C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History
• Baldwin in the Literary Encyclopedia
• Audio files of speeches and interviews at UC Berkeley
• See Baldwin's 1963 film Take This Hammer, made with Richard O. Moore, about Blacks in San Francisco in the late 1950s.
• Video: Baldwin debate with William F. Buckley (via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center)
• Discussion with Afro-American Studies Dept. at UC Berkeley
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles
• The James Baldwin Collective in Paris, France
• Transcript of interview with Dr. Kenneth Clark
• James Baldwin at the Internet Movie Database
• James Baldwin at Find a Grave