Front Row Classics is thrilled to welcome Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart. Brandon and Jacqueline discuss her career in film scholarship and origins as a film fan. The two also discuss her passion for African American film history and silent film. The conversation, then, turns to TCM's 31 Days of Oscar. Brandon receives Jacqueline's thoughts on four of the films featured this month: In the Heat of the Night, Cabin in the Sky, Sounder and All About Eve.
Jacqueline Stewart is the host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Silent Sunday Nights showcases silent films from all over the world, including both feature films and shorts, spanning from the work of groundbreaking filmmakers Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux and Mabel Normand, to Douglas Fairbanks, Robert Flaherty and Alice Guy-Blaché.
Jacqueline Stewart is a film historian, author and archivist whose work amplifies underrepresented voices in cinema. She is Professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. From 2021 to 2024, Stewart served as Chief Artistic and Programming Officer and then Director and President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.
Stewart was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2021 for ensuring that the contributions of overlooked Black filmmakers and communities of spectators have a place in the public imagination. In 2018, Stewart was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Stewart is the author of the award-winning book Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity, a study of African Americans and silent cinema. She is coeditor of L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema, a landmark study of the first generation of film school trained Black filmmakers out of UCLA, including Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, and Haile Gerima. She also co-edited William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission about the groundbreaking artist and Renaissance man. Stewart's writings have appeared in Critical Inquiry, Film Quarterly, Film History, and The Moving Image.
Stewart is a passionate film archivist and advocate for film preservation. She studied moving image archiving at UCLA and the FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) Summer School film restoration program at the Cineteca Bologna in Italy. She chairs the National Film Preservation Board (NFPB), which advises the Librarian of Congress on film preservation policy. Stewart has served on the Boards of Chicago Film Archives and the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
A native of Chicago's South Side, Stewart founded the South Side Home Movie Project to preserve, digitize and screen amateur footage documenting everyday life from the perspectives of South Side residents. Housed at the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life Initiative, the Project will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2025.
Stewart’s interests as a scholar, archivist and curator come together in Pioneers of African American Cinema (Kino-Lorber), a 5-disc set she co-curated in 2015 that features the most comprehensive assemblage of early African American filmmaking. In 2022, Stewart was named to Chicago's "Film 50 Changemakers" Hall of Fame by Newcity magazine.
Stewart received her PhD in English from the University of Chicago, and her BA from Stanford University where she majored in English. She was Associate Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film and African American Studies at Northwestern University (2007-2013). She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the 2023 Silver Light Award from the Association of Moving Image Archivists, and the 2024 Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
