On February 20, 1992, John Singleton became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for his role as director of the film, Boyz n the Hood.
The film starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lawrence Fishburne introduced mainstream society to South Central Los Angeles. The film centers around Tre, who was sent to live with his father, Furious Styles in South Central Los Angeles.
At 24, Singleton was the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director and the first African-American to be nominated for the award.
Yesterday, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) screened the film on the last day of the American Black Film Festival at AMC Empire 25 in Manhattan. TCM’s sponsorship of the “A Look Back Screening” aligns with the network’s mission of showing great films with context and curation of content.
Following the film, there was a Q&A with Singleton about the film, that was deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library Congress in 2002. “The movie was much more than a movie to me,” said Singleton. “It was a cathartic effort. I wrote this movie when I was 20-years old in film school. They tell you in film school to write what you know. When I was in school, I was pretty much one of the only black kids in the film Department at USC. I wrote about my friends.”
In addition to being deemed culturally significant by TCM, Boyz n the Hood was also selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
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