EFP 75: Ashley Clark on The World of Black Film

On this episode of the podcast, host Dr Pasquale Iannone is joined by author Ashley Clark to discuss his new book The World of Black Film (2026).Ashley is a writer, critic and broadcaster. He is also Curatorial Director at the Criterion Collection. His previous roles include director of film programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ashley has curated film series at BFI Southbank and the Museum of Modern Art amongst others. He has written for Film Comment, Reverse Shot, and Sight and Sound, and his first book - on Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000) - came out in 2015.Spanning more than a century of film history, Ashley’s new book The World of Black Film is a fascinating, illuminating survey of black cinema through 100 key works. From avant-garde dramas to action thrillers, blaxploitation films to biopics, comedies to war films. Ashley provides sharp, engaging analysis of  pictures by Ousmane Sembène, Spike Lee, Gordon Parks, Sara Gómez, Horace Ové, Kathleen Collins, Souleymane Cissé, Steve McQueen and many more.Ashley tells Pasquale about the background to the book and his approach to selecting the 100 films. He also reveals some of the personal memories and connections that feed into the book.