Start, Bench, Cut: Screening the Basketball Film

Dr. Samantha Sheppard ('07) will present an in-depth analysis of the sports film genre, focusing on its portrayal of Black athletes, through the lens of Jessie Maple's groundbreaking independent feature "Twice as Nice" ('89). The event will feature a screening of the film, followed by a discussion on the conventions of basketball films and Maple's portrayal of Black women college athletes during a time before the creation of professional leagues such as the WNBA. Drawing upon her first book, "Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen" (University of California Press, 2020), as well as her forthcoming publication, "The Basketball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History" (Rutgers University Press), Dr. Sheppard will highlight the basketball film as a significant genre for understanding race and representation in American cinema.

The screening will be held at 4:30 pm on Thursday, October 2, in the Film & Media Studies Screening Room, Visual Arts Center Room 001.

samantha_sheppard.png

Samantha N. Sheppard is an associate professor of cinema and media studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. She is the author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (University of California Press, 2020) and co-editor of From Madea to Media Mogul: Theorizing Tyler Perry (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) and Sporting Realities: Critical Readings on the Sports Documentary (University of Nebraska Press, 2020). She has published essays in academic and popular venues such as Film Quarterly, The Atlantic, Flash Art International, and Los Angeles Review of Books. She has also been featured, most recently, on the podcast American Prodigies and the television network Turner Classic Movies. Her latest essay, "Deep Cuts," was commissioned for Tiona Nekkia McClodden's exhibition "The Trace of an Implied Presence," a multidisciplinary exhibition exploring contemporary Black dance organized by the artist and co-produced by Nike and The Shed. She is currently working on two new book projects: the first, The Basketball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History, is under contract with Rutgers University Press; and the second, A Black W/hole: Phantom Cinemas and the Reimagining of Black Women's Media Histories, is a project for which she was named a 2021 Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This event is supported by the Institute for Black Cultural and Intellectual Life & the Department of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College.

screenshot_2025-09-23_at_12.19.07_pm.png