Movies Twice as Nice, Will | ||
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Jessie Maple is an American cinematographer and film director most noted as a pioneer for the civil rights of African-Americans and women in the film industry. She was among the first African-American women to create long-form dramatic narrative films.
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Early life and education
Maple was born in Louisiana in 1947 in a family of 4 brothers and seven sisters. She worked in a bacteriology laboratory and later wrote for the New York Courier. She received film training through programs run by WNET public television in New York City and Ossie Davis's Third World Cinema. She began her career in film as an apprentice editor for Shaft's Big Score and The Super Cops. After being admitted to the Film Editor's Union, Maple studied and passed the examination for the Cinematographer's Union.
Career
Following a prolonged legal struggle in 1973, Maple became the first African-American woman admitted to the New York camera operators union. She described her lawsuits and struggle in a self-published autobiographical book, How to Become a Union Camerawoman (1976). In 1974, with her husband, Leroy Patton, Maple cofounded LJ Films Productions to produce short documentaries.
In 1981, Maple released the independent feature film Will, a gritty drama about a girls' basketball coach struggling with heroin addiction. With that release, Maple has been cited as the first African-American woman to direct an independent feature-length film in the post-civil rights era. In order to show her own film, and other independent movies by African-Americans, Maple and Patton opened the 20 West Theater, Home of Black Cinema in their Harlem brownstone home in 1982. Her second independent feature film was Twice as Nice from a screenplay by poet and actress Saundra Pearl Sharp. Released in 1989, the film is a tale of twin sisters who play basketball.
The Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University holds the papers and films of Maple in the Jessie Maple Collection, 1971–1992.