Madeline Anderson's Film: The Integration Report, 1960

Filmmaker Madeline Anderson

From the book, Reel Black Talk: A Sourcebook of 50 American Filmmakers, by Spencer Moon --  Being a pioneer is never easy.  Madeline Anderson thought in her days of growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that she would be a filmmaker--a surprise to her family and friends.  "People equated film-making with Hollywood, and everyone knew a Black girl couldn't aspire to be a Hollywood producer."  She was encouraged to pursue another interest -- teaching.

Anderson has put the two together and is the first African American female independent filmmaker in the United States to produce a television series and have it air nationally.  She became executive producer of the Infinity Factory (1978), which aired on PBS.  It taught 8- to 12- year olds the everyday usage of mathematics.  Anderson worked for four years as an in-house producer and director for the Children's Television Workshop (CTW).  She produced a dozen or more short films and two half-hour documentary-style teaching films for parents and teachers.  For The Infinity Factory (in addition to being executive producer), Anderson produced twenty-three 3-minute films, and produced and directed eithteen magazine-lenght (7-8 minute long) documentaries, ten of which she edited.  She started making films as a civil rights activist to inform and encourage people to act.  (source: Reel Black Talk: A Sourcebook of 50 American Filmmakers, by Spencer Moon)

The Integration Report

INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION  --  Anderson's first independent film was Integration Report, One (1960).  She described what it was like to make Integration Report, One:

This film taught me that you can't be an independent filmmaker unless you know how to do it.  To do all of it.  From making that film, I got into editing as a career path in filmmaking. (source: Reel Black Talk: A Sourcebook of 50 American Filmmakers, by Spencer Moon) 

Integration Report, Part One: Madeline Anderson's documentary on the use of organized resistance as a force of social change in Montgomery, Alabama, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. Features 1959 and 1960 footage of demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and boycotts. Producer, Madeline Anderson. 1960. 20 min