Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness Producers: Llewellyn Smith, Vincent Brown and Christine Herbes-Sommers, A co-production of Vital Pictures and the Independent Television Service (ITVS), 2009. Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness is a thought-provoking documentary about Herskovits’s foundational contributions to anthropology, African American history, and cultural studies as well as the continuing intellectual relevance of his work. The authors have imaginatively combined archival film footage (some shot by Herskovits himself), photographs, animation, and re-enactments. The result is a highly effective use of the visual medium of film, especially in the fast-paced accumulation of profound questions at the end of the documentary and in the segment concerning the 1969 storming of the African Studies Association by black activists, which productively recalls Chris Marker’s seminal photo-essay, La Jetée.