African American cinema
African American cinema is loosely classified as films made by, for, or about Black Americans. Films were made with African-American casts and were targeted at an African-American audience. The production team and director were also sometimes African American. More recently, Black films feature multicultural casts, and are aimed at multicultural audiences, even if American Blackness is essential to the storyline.

Issues of representation, derogatory stereotypes and tired tropes have affected Black American cinema from the start of a century-plus history that roughly coincided with the century-plus history of American cinema. From the very earliest days of moving pictures, major studios used Black actors to appeal to Black audiences while also often relegating them to bit parts, casting women as maids or nannies, and men as natives or servants or either gender as a "magical negro," an update on the "noble savage." Many of the so-called "race films" of 1915 to the mid-1950s were, therefore, designed to function as "counter-programing," and focused on combating the racism of the Jim Crow south. In the 1960s and 70s, Blaxploitation films, regardless of their many stereotypical characters, were also praised for portraying Black people as the heroes and subjects of their own stories. By the 1980s, more realistic dramas finally came to the fore with auteurs like Spike Lee and John Singleton leading the way for later filmmakers like Jordan Peele, Ava DuVernay — and Ryan Coogler whose 2018 blockbuster Black Panther was widely praised for its Afrocentric urban utopia of Black people, complete with foundation myth, legendary hero and "utter delight in its African-ness."
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