Pleading the Blood

"There is no doubt that Professor Sieving's book will make an indispensable addition to the history of 1970s Black filmmaking and the beginning of what we now consider Black art cinema. Within the broader field of film studies, it offers an important contribution to industry studies, independent cinema history, and offers valuable insights into the formation of what later came to be known as the "art cinema" paradigm in film studies. Clearly written, the book acts also as an accessible intellectual biography of a Black artist who consistently fought against external impositions to his freedom of expression (both personal and artistic). Because it does not overlap with existing works, it can begin to prepare the terrain for a history of post-war Black independent filmmaking (and especially Black art cinema) to be finally written."

~Alessandra Raengo, author of Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled.

"Sieving has produced the definitive history and critical assessment of Ganja & Hess that will be an indispensable companion to an elusive film and an enigmatic director and effectively argues for the significance of both to the history of American cinema. Those already familiar with the film will learn a tremendous amount and those new to the film will encounter a rich artifact whose history intersects with the major figures of African American artistic thought and political aesthetics."

~Allyson Nadia Field, author of Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black Modernity

"This volume confirms that Christopher Sieving is one of our finest film historians. Pleading the Blood is impeccably researched and well written and confirms the place of honor that Ganja and Hess, and especially Bill Gunn, should have in the cinematic canon."

~Gerald Butters, Aurora University

"Sieving's Pleading the Blood is an exhaustive study of a cinematic masterpiece about bloodlust and its talented, enigmatic writer-director. The book is a sweeping tutorial in what happens when ingenious creativity comes up against industrial timidity and prosaicness. The result is illuminating lessons in genre and the economic imperatives of film production as well as identity politics and discrimination."

~Robin R. Means Coleman, Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor of Communication Studies, Northwestern University

"Sieving's book is much more than a single-film study. It is the most comprehensive account to date of Gunn, a Black queer artist who, "in nearly every aspect of his existence," Sieving writes, "breached borders and upset hierarchies" ."

~Hayley O'Malley, Film Quarterly