The Criterion Collection edition of House Party (1990) was released last week, and Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies Racquel Gates served as a consulting producer on the project. As part of this release, Gates also conducted a video interview with writer-director Reginald Hudlin and producer Warrington Hudlin. These interviews will be included in the bonus features of the home release.
The conversation, as described on the Criterion Forum, is “an insightful and genuinely enjoyable conversation” that “touches on music, class divisions, and even Gates's own observations, including reading the film’s structure through the lens of a musical.”
House Party follows main character Kid, who decides to go to his friend Play's house party, but neither of them can predict what's in store for them on what could be the wildest night of their lives.
Dr. Racquel Gates received her PhD from Northwestern University’s department of Screen Cultures. She also holds an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and a BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Her research focuses on blackness and popular culture, with special attention to discourses of taste and quality. She is the author of Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture. In 2020, she was named an Academy Film Scholar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She used the grant to support work on her next book, Hollywood Style and the Invention of Blackness. Her work appears in both scholarly and popular publications, some of which include The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Film Quarterly, Television & New Media, as well as other journals and collections. She is also a regular contributor to numerous podcasts, television programs, and recorded film interviews.
