Third World Newsreel Mourns the Recent Passing of Pearl Bowser (1931–2023)
Pearl Bowser was a significant figure in Black independent film, researching, chronicling, exhibiting and promoting. Third World Newsreel mourns her passing and remembers her important contributions to TWN’s work.
Pearl Bowser has been rightfully honored as the “Godmother of Black Independent Cinema,” the pioneer who brought the work and life of trailblazing filmmaker Oscar Micheaux and other Black filmmakers to the public eye and organized and curated many exhibitions and programs featuring Black films and filmmakers.
Pearl was also a crucial member of TWN from 1978 to 1987, as director of the Higher Ground Cinema, a micro cinema located in our Manhattan offices. She led several of TWN’s touring programs, from the Retrospective of Independent Black American Cinema (1980–81), and Journey Across Three Continents (1983- 1985), with their resulting monograph publications. Journey screened films in 20 sites and 13 cities, and its monograph included historical highlights of Black American film as well as a filmography of African and Black Diaspora films, with articles by Haile Gerima, Angela Gilliam, Mbye Cham, Clyde Taylor, and Juanita Howard, among others. These festival exhibitions were among the first to feature a range of Black Diasporic and African films together in the U.S. and are key examples of Pearl’s vision for Black cinema — interconnected and independent. Pearl was also part of the first Third World Cinema Conference (1983) that TWN organized. Finally. she was an Associate Producer and Photo Researcher on MISSISSIPPI TRIANGLE (1984) — a TWN film production that is now being preserved with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation — and the Producer of NAMIBIA INDEPENDENCE NOW! (1985) — which was made in collaboration with the United Nations.
She went on, after her work at TWN, to direct her own film, MIDNIGHT RAMBLE (1994), founded Chamba Educational Film Services, a distribution company, and African Diaspora Images, a visual and oral history collection of African-American filmmaking. Her film and paper collections are part of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture archives.
We will remember Pearl for her fierce determination and vision for Black film and her dedication to Black and BIPOC filmmakers. Pearl Bowser, presente!
