In this edited volume, Kasi Lemmons, the first African-American woman auteur to solidly and steadily produce a full body of work in cinemäan oeuvre of quality, of note, of international recognition¿will get the full film-studies treatment. This collection offers the first scholarly examination of Lemmons¿ films through various frameworks of film theory, illuminating her highly personal, unique, and rare vision. In Lemmons¿ worldview, the spiritual and the supernatural manifest in the natural, corporeal world. She subtly infuses her work with such images and narratives, owning her formalism, her modernist aesthetic, her cinematic preoccupations and her ontological leanings on race. Lemmons holds the varied experiences of African-American