BLACK AMERICAN CINEMA WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Six independently made films, dealing with subjects ranging from the history of stereotypes to the history of weaponry, were selected as winners in the Black American Cinema Society’s annual competition, held Saturday at USC’s Davidson Conference Center.

All 13 entries will be screened Feb. 7 at 1:30 p.m. at the Four Star Theater as part of the society’s ninth annual Black Talkies on Parade Film Festival, which runs Feb. 6--12. Makers of the winning films will receive their prizes at a reception Feb. 1 at the Directors Guild.

Marlon T. Riggs, an independent Berkeley writer-producer-director, won the $1,500 first prize for his film “Ethnic Notions.” The 58-minute documentary, which impressed one of the judges for its “intelligent juxtapositions of reality with stereotypes,” chronicles images of blacks in America, using a mixture of reportage and scholarly analysis to argue that popular art and entertainment have helped to perpetuate derogatory images of blacks.

Los Angeles film maker Candace Madonna Smith took the second-place award of $1,000 for “It’s a New Dawn,” a success story about a young black woman with a low income and limited opportunities who overcomes her frustrations by learning a vocation.

The third-place award of $750 went to a black-and-white documentary with no dialogue by Alonzo Crawford, called “Crowded.” The film, which is a journey through an overcrowded Baltimore prison, uses footage of unclean kitchens, unsanitary toilets and indifferent guards and inmates as a commentary on the suffocating character of prisons.

Honorable mentions were awarded to the following films:

Ashley C. James’ “And Still We Dance,” a brief work-in-progress about the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival; Edward T. Lewis’ “Serving Two Masters,” a work-in-progress contrasting the philosophical differences of two friends--one an ex-priest, who became a vagrant after disenchantment with the church, and the other a computer executive charged with promoting his company’s ventures in South Africa; Frank Wiley’s “A Faith in Arms,” a historical overview of the evolution of the arms race in which vintage images of war are stylized with starkly colored graphics.

For program and ticket information on the awards reception and the festival, which this year salutes actress Rosalind Cash, call (213) 737-3292 or (213) 737-3585.