White woman putting white paint on black naked man

A young black lesbian filmmaker probes into the life of The Watermelon Woman, a 1930s black actress who played 'mammy' archetypes.

Applying: a nude woman is painted completely black. Attention concentrated on the process of going from white to black. Removing: she washes herself off in the bathtub, and goes from black to grey to white. Seemingly austere, the film is resonant on many levels, and each viewer brings to it his/her own associations.

While a calm, controlled narrator reads a treatise on the proper use and care of paints and brushes, the correct way to clean old canvasses, and how to employ a variety of artistic techniques, a female model enters an all-white studio, removes her clothes, and allows her entire body to be painted by a male artist. When the job is done, the artist suddenly appears painted in the same manner as his model and the two climb into bed with sheets painted like the couple. Precise editing and cinematography sharpen a creative and delightful experience

Nude Body Painting

“For Black and White Film, Huot created his own photographic imagery for the first time. After a few moments of darkness, a young woman (Sheila Raj) lowers a covering of some kind, slowly revealing her naked body. She reaches outside the circle of light, which illuminates only her silvery form, scoops up dark paint, and, beginning with her feet, gradually paints her entire body. When she has become invisible except for the faint sheen of the paint, she drops her arms, looks straight ahead, and the film fades to total darkness. The serenity of the film, which is structurally reflected by Huot’s presentation of the action from a single position in a single take, its sensuality, and the aura of ritual it creates (Raj always moves in a formal way and, except when she needs to look for the paint, looks modestly down) make Black and White Film a quietly haunting work.”—Scott MacDonald, “The Films of Robert Huot: 1967 to 1972”, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980.