A Black Comedy and Swim Meet, Director: Helen Foley, undated

"A Black Comedy"" is an adaptation of Sherman Alexie's ""The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven"". ""Swim Meet"" is a film about two kids meeting at the swimming pool.

This film is made by students of Helen Foley, one of the high school teachers participating in the Media Center's outreach programs, which aimed at nurturing creative, technical and social skills in students across the state. Foley was one of the most prolific teachers taking part in these programs and she also took part in the Media Center's film programs with inmates in the Texan prison system.

In the Houston area, this project was mainly carried out in Wheatley High School, a historically Black school in the Fifth Ward, and the Bellaire High School, where Helen Foley possibly taught English at that time. Another teacher very engaged in the program was Shirely Wiley, but we have not found surviving films from her students. Both women taught English at Bellaire High School. Annually, around 20 teachers would take workshops on filmmaking and teaching with film. The workshops usually lasted three weeks, or 15 business days in total.

While the surviving copy of the film does not have sound, it is highly possible that the original had sound. Most of the films produced by the Media Center's outreach programs in schools across the state of Texas were shot on Super 8 and only subsequently blown up to 16mm prints, possibly for screening purposes.

One of the venues where these films would be shown was the high school film festival, organized for all students and teachers who had used film in their classes and also made films of their own. The award given at the festival was named the Brazos Film Award.

The whole filmmaking in high schools program was eventually transferred from the Media Center to the South West Alternative Media Project (SWAMP). A lot of the funding from the project came from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts, and later from the Culture and Arts Council of Houston.

"A Black Comedy" is shot at Hermann Park.