Barbara McCullough

Barbara McCullough (born 1945) is an American director, production manager and visual effects artist whose directorial works are associated with the Los Angeles School of Black independent filmmaking. She is best known for Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification, Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space (1980), Fragments (1980), and World Saxophone Quartet (1980).

Early life and education Born in New Orleans, McCullough moved to Los Angeles when she was 11 years old. Her father was a musician and because he was a blind veteran she had scholarship opportunities which allowed her to attend private school. and after taking courses at Cal State L.A. and L.A. Community College, got into UCLA through an undergraduate affirmative action program. Being a UCLA student, McCullough partook in Project One which was a rite of passage for aspiring film students which had them write, direct, and edit a motion picture during their first academic quarter before they had had a production class. Project One would be the starting point for many of the filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion including Julie Dash and Carrol Parrott Blue.

McCullough was fascinated by dance, but she felt that she had to look outside it for a way to express her creativity within the constraints of her role as a college student enrolled at UCLA and as the mother of two children. She was also interested in history, psychology and literature, particularly the work of Zora Neale Hurston. McCullough would go on to earn her B.A. in Communications Studies and her M.F.A. in Theater Arts, Film and Television Production at UCLA, and her work secured her position as an influential representative of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers. The women filmmakers of the Los Angeles School shared the movement's desire to communicate their ideas about black people's history and experience in film or video, but they also often sought to emphasize women's experiences, and McCullough's work in particular was preoccupied with the themes of creativity and ritual.

She would later recall about her time at UCLA that "it was unwritten philosophy that you weren't just a student but an independent filmmaker existing in a community of independent filmmakers who supported each other's work as best they could. Most of the time, no one had any real financial support, and it took some of us years to complete our projects. But the film school was our factory and production facility. Each one of us was a mini film company producing our very special works. We basically learned from each other and struggled through a system that wasn't particularly nurturing. I don't think that the faculty really thought that there was a life for our work beyond film school", and that, "it was a highly politically charged environment."

Career Independent career

McCullough's first film Chephren-Khafra: Two Years of a Dynasty was produced as her Project One film at UCLA. McCullough explained that the woman was intended to symbolize all displaced people from developing countries who are forced to live according to the values of other cultures. Her act of defiance in a strange land asserts her freedom over her own body.

Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space consists of separate episodes documenting Los Angeles artists as they create works of improvisational art. McCullough interviews the artists and asks them about their ritual and creative processes, and her subjects include painter and sculptor Kinshasha Conwill; poet Kamau Daa'ood; sculptor David Hammons; sculptor N'senga Negundi; musician Raspoeter Ojenke; and painter and sculptor Bettye Saar.

She uses this as a means of self-determination and self-representation. As many of the other L.A. Rebellion filmmakers express in their works; it is crucial for a community to define itself on its own terms. McCullough chooses to represent the rituals and creative processes of these artists to allow them to speak for themselves. Despite allowing the interviewees the space within the film, McCullough occupies the lens and space outside of and surround each subject. She uses this space to speak for herself, to allow herself to become a subject. Under this lens, her work takes on a new meaning that allows the viewer to uncover each layer of the film. The filmmaker no longer exists as a viewer, they become as much a part of the experience for the audience as the actors.

Her short film Fragments (1980) is a continuation into the exploration of ritual from Shopping Bag Spirits.

Her 1980 short film World Saxophone Quartet is about a short conversation with the World Saxophone Quartet whose members comment on their work and motivation.

McCullough has completed substantial work toward a documentary about Black jazz pianist and composer Horace Tapscott (Horace Tapscott: Musical Griot), who stayed in Los Angeles even after attaining a national reputation so that he could continue to help the Watts community where he grew up. After two decades working in film production and visual effects in Los Angeles, she has earned multiple credits on big studio feature films including The Prince of Egypt (1998), Toys (1992), and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995). McCullough was also the Chair of the Visual Effects Department at Savannah College of Art and Design (2010-2016)

Style and themes McCullough's films tend to involve the African diaspora, black feminism, and improvisation. They, “go beyond resisting spectatorship and create a space for the "assertion of critical black female spectatorship as”... “they allow new transgressive possibilities for the formulation of identity.’”

Influences

She has cited Maya Deren, Jonas Mekas, and Senga Nengundi as influences.

Filmography

2017 New Orleans Film Festival Documentary Official Selection

Audience Award at 2017 Pan African Film Festival

Best Documentary Feature Nomination at 2017 BlackStar Festival

Grants

Grants for her work include an Avant-Garde Masters Grant for experimental film from the National Film Preservation Film Foundation for restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archives of her film Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification. Other grants were awarded by Brody Arts Fund, the Black Programming Consortium-Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles, Western States Black Research Foundation and the National Endowments for the Arts.