At age twenty-four, John Singleton became the youngest person ever to receive an Academy Award nomination for best director for the 1991 film Boyz N the Hood, which he also wrote. The movie chronicles the struggles of three black friends growing up in South Central, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. While Singleton addresses issues and themes of specific relevance to African Americans in Boys N the Hood, the motion picture proved commercially successful with diverse audiences. With this venture, Singleton became one of a number of young black filmmakers redefining mainstream cinema in the mid-1980s. Shunning the traditional Hollywood formula which resolves conflicts happily, artists such as Spike Lee, Matty Rich, and Singleton strive to tell authentic black urban stories in which problems defy simple solutions. Intrigued by this new cinematic trend, critics as well as audiences have responded favorably to Singleton's work. "No first film in the...