## I. Yamekraw

A Hollywood conception of the Negro
Produced by Vitaphone

Musical Arrangement
Story
Direction

Photography

Made in U. S. A.

1928

James P. Johnson
Stanley Rauh
Murray Roth
Emanuel Essman
Edward Du Par

## 2. Black and White

A musical cartoon based on a poem by Vladimir Maiakovski

Produced by MEJHRABPOMFILM
Scenario by Kovalenkov and Skliut
Artist-directors - L. Amalrik and I. Vano
Music by G. Gambourg
Sound by N. Pisarev
Recitaion by K. V. Eggert

Made in U. S. S. R.

The animated cartoon has assumed a form in the Soviet studios that is far different from that which has developed in America. Unlike the fast movement and comedy of the American cartoon, the Russians have created a drawing and composition that is far more refined, as well as a content that is of far greater substance. One need only note the treatment accorded the padre, or that refreshingly simple and unaffected statement:

The negro stood, his nose bleeding;
his hand holding his chin.
How should he have known
that with such a question
One must go to the Comintern, in Moscow

**Black and White** is based on a poem by that name by Vladimir Maiakovski, futurist, and one of the most popular pots of the civil war period in Soviet Russia.

## BLACK and WHITE

By V. Maiakovski

Translated by Langston Hughes

April, 1933.

To do Havana in a glance—
Paradise land, all it ought to be.
Under a palm, on one leg, a flamingo stands.

**Calero** blossoms all over Vedado.

In Havana everything has its place:
The white folks have dollars,
The blacks haven't. Therefore
Willie stands with his brush.

In Henry Clay & Co., Ltd.
Willie, who has swept up during his life—Tinl
A wilderness of dust,
Until his hair has fallen out and his stomach in.

1933

Meagre is the dull spectrum of his joys:
Six hours to sleep on his back:
And occasionally that thief of a port officer,
Passing, might throw him a penny.
Can you hide from dirt?
Perhaps, if people would go on their heads?
But then they would raise more dust—
They have a thousand hairs, but only two legs.

The fashionable Prado runs nearby.
Here, there clinks and flashes
Three kilometres of jazz.
A fool might think that really,
Right here in Havana is the ex-paradise.

In Willie's brain there are few furrows:
Little sown, little harvest.
One thing, though, Willie knows by heart,
Stronger than the stone of Maceo's monument:
The whites eat the ripe pineapples,
The blacks—those damp with rotteness.
The whites do the light work,
The blacks—the heavy.

Few questions bore into Willie's mind.
But one was the question of questions.
Once when this question crowded into Willie,
The brush fell out of Willie's hands
And it happened that just then,
One of the most magnificent of the sugar kings,
Whiter than flocks of white clouds,
Came to visit the cigar king, Henry Clay.

The Negro approached this fat slob:
"Excuse me, Mr. Bragg,
But why's your white, white sugar made by black Negroes?
A black cigar don't go with your moustach—
That's for a Negro with a black moustach.
And, by you like coffee with sugar,
Why don't you grow the sugar yourself?"

Such questions don't pass easily.
The king turned from white to yellow.
The king swayed from the blow he gave,
Threw down his gloves and went away.

All around, the marvels of botany blossomed.
The banana trees wove their solid roof.
The Negro wiped on his drawers the hand
That had cleaned the blood **away** from his nose.
The Negro snuffled through his smashed nose.
He picked up his brush, holding his hand to his jaw.

How could he know that with such questions
He should address the Comintern at Moscow?