Black filmmaking has long been relegated to the margins of film history. In recent years, with the increasing interest in ideas of decolonisation in art and culture as well as in academia, it has finally become more visible. The first part of the lecture will focus on Wiliam Reuben (“Skip”) Norman, who was part of the first cohort of students when “Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie” (DFFB) was founded in 1966. In reconstructing Skip Norman’s trajectory, the specificities of the film school context, and the special situation of Norman’s expatriate position will be highlighted. In the second part of this lecture, we will consider Norman in the larger context of Black Internationalism in film and culture in the 1960s and 1970s. Norman belonged to an ideological and mutually supportive cohort that circulated around each other in Europe, if not always directly interacting or collaborating. We might think of a filmmaker like Melvin van Peebles, or a polemicist and activist like Angela Davis, or even a man of letters like James Baldwin. Skip Norman’s position in this historical continuum has yet to be properly accounted for.