Jacinto Taras Riddick and Che Ayende have partnered to give us not only the best collaboration in cinema of the past year, but a shocking example of the concussive force of writing, directing and performing for the screen that I have been waiting to see for a long time. I went into the screening a lapsed filmmaker, and emerged with my faith restored.
Read MoreThe actor, by nature, is the most political of all artists because he is literally using his body as an instrument to engage in our accepted or disregarded mores, injustices, dreams, longings, etc. The actor marries double consciousness seamlessly – the past and the present - in order to leave the audience with a potential future…he is a shaman, and we rely on him to heal the tribe or at least tell us what ails us. THIS is Ivan Dixon.
Read MoreIt is immoral to utilize “beautiful and seductive” photography for a film that is couched in shame and regret and unconscionable acts. Tumors are not beautiful and to deny their ugliness and terror is to deny the affliction.
Read More“Passing” tries to normalize behavior indicative of the crisis and mental states Frantz Fanon - a man who died trying to free the colonized mind - warned us about. This should be a harbinger for every filmmaker who even THINKS about making a movie about Black self-hatred and “passing.”
Read MoreIs film the optimal medium for presenting history?
Read MoreQuantity has replaced quality in many aspects of life, in particular the arts - high or low. In the peculiar and singular realm of Black cinema it is less about canons or exhaustive ouvres. Kangalee explores how the power of singular works can surpass a dredge of mediocre and sometime meaningless works.
Read MoreTodd Haynes’ new documentary “The Velvet Underground” dismisses the exceptionalism of super-producer Tom Wilson, whitewashing his accomplishments from a seminal period of rock n’ roll. There’s little doubt on how that happened, but we explore further.
Read MoreThe producer responsible for the greatest rock & roll single is still a mystery nearly six decades later. Ishmael Reed often iterates that Black people have to be paranoid to survive. Nothing prepares one for the atrocious behavior of those who “cover up” the crime of dwindling and exiling an artist’s influence, contributions, and impression left behind.
Read MoreWithin the Black tradition of filmmaking, mentorship has always been a necessity. The understanding of the power that images have on the masses, the de facto “one at a time” hiring practices, and the lack of initiative by the studios to fund Black projects paired with their funding of hateful and harmful images - fuels this urgency.
Read MoreGordon Parks being depicted as the "Father" of Blaxploitation Cinema is atrocious lies and makes his work and legacy "easy" and "pat" for movie academics and white kids in the suburbs
Read MoreKathleen Collins’ The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy gives us an urge to be free, to literally want to run and “find ourselves.”
Read MoreIn pt 2, Dennis Leroy Kangalee explores Billy Dee Williams’ personal iconography, his search for a director who can channel him correctly, Billy Dee’s psychedelic mind expansions, and, oh yeah, Star Wars.
Read MoreOur blog contributor Jacob Gray, who recently completed the first-ever THUH FILM FESTIVAL, chats with Luminal founder Curtis Caesar John about film programming and a life in cinema
Read MoreDennis Leroy Kangalee explores how and why actor Billy Dee Williams is our most underrated matinee idol
Read MoreThe indomitable Kaycee Moore stands as a monument to a kind of stoic beauty that many of the characters in her films depend on.
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