The Dead Room (2015)
It isn’t too often that I get shaken up by a horror film these days, but when I do it’s an embarrassing hot mess. Each creak of wood settling in my house becomes the sound of a dormant spirit ready to exact revenge. Clanks and bangs from my dishwasher are just sinister noises that are obviously a ghost trying to communicate with me. Sometimes if a film is effective enough I can’t even manage my way to the bathroom without the assistance of every light in my path for the uncertainty that something will be lurking in the shadows. It takes a lot to truly scare me, but I can always appreciate a good chill. The Dead Room delivered a modest shiver that made me debate whether the walk to the unlit back of my house for the restroom was worth it as opposed to just waiting it out until my next destination so that I could find comfort and security in my car.
The Dead Room may not be beaming example of an exceptional horror film, but it’s a fascinating, entertaining one. By taking an age-old concept and revisiting it in a unique way, The Dead Room prompts chills and hits unexpected curves producing a thrilling, refreshing tale of the paranormal. The Dead Room doesn’t extract itself from the genre of horror so it employs the same tropes as past horror films of its nature. Yet, when three ghost hunters enter into a house to prove, or rather disprove, its inhabitancy of ghosts using technologically and skepticism the bumps in the night become all the more shaking, quite literally.
Jason Stutter sets the backdrop of the terrifying abode among a luscious surfeit of tree laden mountains capped in rock and snow. The Dead Room opens to beautiful establishing shots highlighting the grandeur of New Zealand before it takes a disparaging nosedive into visually clunky CGI background moments once at the cabin. Nevertheless, Stutter bares his skill allowing the camera to dance around objects and characters throughout the cabin setting a chillingly ominous tone and keeping viewers unsure if the camera serves as an innocent bystander or a ghostly presence.
Stutter and Kevin Stevens’ script lends itself to a clever tale that naturally progresses the situational horror the ghost hunters find themselves in. As each night gets spookier for the trio they continue to stay in the house at the behest of the more scientifically fixated professor Scott (Jeffery Thomas), a professor hell bent on using science to dispute claims of ghosts while also using his stay to work on a thesis for sound displacement of matter. Scott continually plays devil’s advocate to his two frightened and rationally minded partners Holly (Laura Petersen) and Liam (Jed Brophy) persuading them to stay longer by assuring them that their mere presence is contributing to changing the world and the way that paranormal investigations are done.
By the second act of the film, the action gets revved up creating an unsettling atmosphere and an intriguing twist although its final act errs on the side of convoluted and messy. The Dead Room calls to mind past horror films like The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, and The Haunting. It encompasses elements from all of these films and then some but is able to add its own flair and suspense instead of being a carbon copy of its contemporaries. Overall, The Dead Room manages to maintain itself as an entertaining horror film with a short enough run time making it easily digestible and enjoyable.
Out now on DVD, Video on Demand, and Select Theaters.
To err is human. This is a fundamental truth of human nature. This fact is also the folly of mankind. It was once thought that our mistakes only affected ourselves and those in immediate junction to us, but as time progresses and our world shrinks through the advent of our global communication network we are witnessing how our errs unfairly affect each other and ourselves on a much larger and broader scale. A few days ago a video popped up in my news feed on Facebook. An African-American woman was recorded accosting a white male with dreads. As of Friday, the barely one-minute long video has reached an astounding 3 million hits while hundreds of comments ranging from the abhorrently racist to the civil and engaging had been made.
In the video viewers watch as the person being accosted attempts to walk away while this woman berates him and grabs him insisting his hair choice is cultural appropriation that takes from her culture. She ostensibly bully’s him as he attempts to walk away and the video ends with her asking the recorder why he is taping the situation to which he replies “for everyone’s safety.” Almost on cue the woman grabs at the camera and the video ends.
This video has triggered multiple emotions within me as it has for most of the viewers who have watched it. Everyone with a keyboard seems to have expressed an opinion over it on some platform of social media. Initially, I was stunned and disgusted at the woman’s actions as her harassment seemed completely unwarranted. The hot topic foaming on the lips of many in the past few years online has been “cultural appropriation” and “micro aggression” and this video exemplified how this woman obviously frequented these words in her daily conversations. Her incessant desire to shame this white male in dreads felt overindulgent and unjustified considering the history of dreadlocks in themselves has never limited itself to one culture or group of people.
While her own ignorance unfortunately sparked a regrettable situation, there are always two sides to every story. Let us all never forget that. Quite soon after the video spilled out from under social media shares into national headline news tag-lines, tweets and screen shots circulated absolving the woman’s actions instead pointing the finger at the deadlocked man himself for supposedly calling her a “bitch” and putting his hands on her before the filming began. This essential bit of information missing from the story has resulted in the scale of blame once again left unbalanced on the side of the minority, a Black female.
Read the rest of this article over at Medium.
It’s almost hard to believe that society once revered Wall Street brokers and investors in high esteem. The style and attitudes of the “young, urban professionals” became so commonplace that handbooks were created to celebrate the existence of Yuppies in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Meanwhile, cinema has always been around to show the shifting opinions on corporate greed ushering in films that inoculated the power and poison of Wall Street into our everyday phrases. On and off through the history of America the Wall Street loyalists found there place in the sun before feeling the scorch of it when the stock market crashed on Black Monday (or Black Tuesday) in 1987. Since then, Wall Street and its materialistic values has been on a constant rise and fall of stocks and favor with the general public. One minute they’re the evil bad guys, the next they are invisible, forgotten members of society until their next superfluous actions puts the economy on barely walkable thin-ice.
With the help of Michael Lewis’ non-fiction book of the same name, Adam McKay and his fellow screenwriting partner Charles Randolph tackle a time ten years ago when Wall Street’s greed and excess broke ground spiraling out of control and throwing innocent Americans underwater during the housing market collapse. The Big Short points all the right fingers at all the wrong decisions made by investors who blinded themselves at the thought of dollars and cents.
I liked The Big Short. I wanted to love it, honest I did. I wanted to love it the way the Academy and audiences did. But, I just couldn’t get past its conflated, showboating mode of storytelling that left me confused and slightly bored. Overall multiple elements of The Big Short prevented it from flowing at a seamless pace, mostly to the fault of McKay and editor Hank Corwin. It’s a film that feels put together by loose ends and jagged edges to make a somewhat comprehensible film about a topic that could have been explored with better precision in documentary form. Though I was entertained by the film’s crass humor and impressed by its gonads in tackling how the greed and corruption of a group of Wall Street executives brought on by an analyst who predicted the bubble would burst, The Big Short just didn’t wow me.
McKay’s and Corwin’s dive into flashy moments and quick paced cuts is ultimately it’s biggest downfall.The Big Short feels dated, like it was a 90’s film à la Oliver Stone or David O. Russel (more specifically Three Kings, a flashy upchuck of outdated cinematics marred by sub-par story telling). The Big Short quickly becomes a flip-book film that cycles through images and moments with little rhyme or reason. Its intent is obviously to capture the essence of the time period and what was popular in an attempt to remind us this wasn’t that long ago. Nevertheless, this method backfires becoming instead a huge distraction to the story at large making much of the aesthetics an eye sore especially cinematographer Barry Ackroyd’s decision of utilizing grainy aesthetics. This odd choice has no purpose in the film’s storytelling considering The Big Short was set a mere ten years ago.
Brad Pitt, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, and Christian Bale fill out the cast as familiar faces that I usually enjoy seeing on-screen. Although here I couldn’t help but feel that these big names got pulled together for profits sake as most of them feel miscast in their roles. Their performances are great consisting of many hilarious lines, but overall not one of these actors felt right in their roles. Gosling, who could probably stare at a shoe in a film and I’d be front row, just doesn’t fit the sleazy, smart-ass trader Jared that he plays. Gosling barely pulls off that sham of a wig he wears throughout the film better than he does his role. Instead he comes off more hamish and silly than slick and confident. Bale isn’t nearly as impressive as I’d hope he’d be helming the film as Dr. Michael Burry, the man who first notices the numbers and bets against the housing market from greedy Wall Street players. Though Bale captures the socially awkward, casually minded Burry he simply doesn’t bring any charm or oomph to the character. Carell is by far The Big Short’s strongest player delivering glimmers of an astounding performance although even still it’s not consistent as he at times feels off and not right for the role either. The big names in The Big Short seem wasted and underdeveloped which works in the favor of the lesser known actors in smaller roles whom shine in their wake.
The Big Short’s story is important. It’s a real life tragedy that gets scrutinized under a microscope to focus on what went wrong and how. Corporate greed, arrogance, ignorance, and pure stupidity is what led to thousands of Americans losing their homes and livelihoods. I admire McKay and Randolph’s bravery and commitment to taking off the haphazardly placed band-aid put on by the government bailout and for revealing the infected wound for what it is. I just wish The Big Short wasn’t as distracting and all over the place as it is. I get it, there’s a lot of boring jargon, numbers, and decisions that goes completely over the heads of average movie goers. Hell I’m still grappling with what equity is. But the film’s use of super quick music video like cuts, strange editing techniques, characters breaking the fourth wall, and its unstable sound mixing made it difficult for me to understand the very issues they were intending to explain.
Margot Robbie in a bubble bath and Selena Gomez didn’t help me figure out the details of subprime loans or what collarotized debt obligations are as well as the film hoped. Instead I got distracted and more confused than if just one of these random tactics got used, a tactic that those flashy Wall-Street workers used to jip innocent people into making poor decisions. Obviously this method worked for McKay earning him Best Director but for me, I still had to Wikipedia what the whole thing was about to understand much of the film.
SEE IT. With reservations. It’s an important film that needs to be seen to outrage you into doing something and paying more attention, though overall it’s pretty lackluster.
Television at it Peak; And Our Newest Golden Age
Can we talk about television for a second? When the Academy Awards aired a two weeks ago, I watched timidly when the Best Picture nominees unfolded reminding me that I had only seen three of the eight films nominated. On top of that I had no idea that Brooklyn, Room, and Spotlight were even films released last year. As a film critic I admit this lack of cinematic awareness is deplorable. I shamed myself more than I can admit. How the hell did I not know what Spotlight was? How had I not seen Carol? How had I never even heard of Room? Then I remembered: instead of going out half way across the city to throw out $13 or more on the latest buzz-worthy films, I had enjoyed the perks of staying at home wrapped under warm blankets with free snacks in tow along with my handy-dandy Apple TV remote engulfing mountains of television.
The reason for my lack of cinematic awareness is because television currently resides in an extended golden age, or Peak TV as this era is called. I can’t tell you what the 1950s-1980s had to offer audiences but in my millennial arrogance I will confidently say, this is the time to be imbued with television. It is literally golden, in a hyperbolic sense that is. I’ve grown up watching television as if it were a religion. My childhood summers fondly consisted of grabbing the TV guide and highlighting the shows that I intended to watch for the week. I’d then make a schedule of those shows beginning at 7:30am when I awoke with my mom as she got ready to leave the house. An hour of Disney channel here, 30 minutes of Nick Jr. there, then back to Disney. By afternoon MTV reigned supreme with occasional switchbacks of BET and VH1 until rounding out my night with Nick at Night.
I in no way intend to say the shows that I watched during this period were “good” in any sense, but these are just illustrations of my life long love of engaging with television. Television has always inoculated my life which is why it fills me with unbridled pleasure that there has been no better time in the history of television in producing quality entertainment that is an educational lens into past lives and social depths. Television is naturally more varied today than it has been in the past. During its originally considered “golden age” there were only four networks sweeping the airwaves. Black and white television consisted of situational comedies, live dramas, game shows and news. These shows were often offshoots of popular radio programs. Eli Kazan’s brilliantly made film, A Face in the Crowd, highlights this era’s often one-dimensional control by a the products and companies that sponsored them. These shows didn’t reflect the colorful fabric of America’s culture. These programs instead often showed Americans what they were supposed to be and what they were expected to buy.
Television took a awhile to find its bearings and put creativity and representation over unscrupulous advertising, but even when it did the results were often short-lived. Proper representation of characters and families began to take a spotty root in the latter half of the1960s into the 1990s. Nevertheless, portrayals continued to exist from a limited, skewed viewpoint. But now, the tides have not only changed, but reached upwards to the moon. In the past 15 years television has gone through major transformations putting the humans at the focal point of stories above all else. Today’s television shows exist as a means to mirror reality and the issues that exist in our current time frame as well as the complexity of humanity. These shows aren’t just stories of one person’s rise or fall, their biography, or their legacy. Television has expanded itself highlighting the myriad aspects of life that viewers can latch on to and dissect.
HBO and FX were among the few channels truly pushing boundaries and fleshing out characters and their worlds with “The Wire“, “Six Feet Under”, “Nip/Tuck”, “The Shield”, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. These were the channels showing us the amazement of the human body both inside and out, the power of the mind, the difficulty at distinguishing “good” or “bad” and defying gender roles and stereotypes. As time passed and other channels followed suit we began to see in mass the reality of men loving other men, women other women, and gender and notions of love getting muddled. Television began to explore the social ills of low-income neighborhoods, drug trade, life in the Middle Ages, in Victorian England for service workers and upper-class. Television is now showing viewers a wide presentation of the different walks of lives that exist among ourselves and the history of our people and fellow humans.
Often times “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” are glorified for their dramatic upheaval and ability to captivate the minds of viewers. When contemplating this current age of television though these shows are second thoughts in my mind, only popping up because of their popularity. I’m sure these shows are phenomenal. And trust me, I believe all of you who constantly tell me to watch them. But, as Alan Sepinwall points out, there were 400 scripted shows alone produced in 2015 along creating a vortex of “too much television”, a conundrum that Rob Sheffield realizes makes it humanly impossible to watch all the shows produced within the year. Therefore, I fear I’ve missed the carriage to jump on board as a fan of these shows since now there is simply too many other things that have become priority to my watching schedule.
It’s about damn time for television though. Cinema has been tapping into exploring social themes and personal trials for decades, however, it’s drawbacks are budget, lengthy time constraints, and often times limited releases for stories that are thought to not appeal to the masses. These days television’s very medium format excludes it from these issues allowing it to remain fresh, innovative, and controversial while also implementing phenomenal style and visual techniques that rival film. These days I’m losing my mind at how “The People vs OJ Simpson” can highlight the racial divide, gender bias, and juicy drama that came from the high-profiled OJ Simpson murder trial all with a sharp visual eye. I’m learning about the inner workings of hacking and how groups like Anonymous slip by unnoticed with the possibility to break apart our economic infrastructure through “Mr. Robot”. Pablo Escabar’s near mythical rise has been given humane roots in my mind thanks for “Narcos”. Between John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Jon Oliver over the years, I able to understand the systems in place all over the world.
Television still has a way to go in the department of representation and there are still so many topics to explore and boundaries to push, but we’ve reached its peak and it looks promising over the edge, though tides could turn and wash it all away. Regardless, television continues to teach me compassion for my fellow human beings who are all just trying to figure out how navigate this crazy existence we were all born into. Everyone has their own ways of coping and are trying their best with what they know and each day I remember to have more patience and understanding with the people I come in contact with thanks to the characters I watch on television. Cinema will always be my number one love, but thank you television all you have done and are doing.
You’re Killing Me (2015); For the Love of Serial Killers
It’s a bold move to make a serial killer the lead in a comedy rife with narcissistic people who possess poor judgment. Bold as it is, writer and director team Jim Hansen and Jeffery Self, concoct a wickedly, unbridled black comedy that roots itself in witty banter, off-beat fun, and gruesome murders. Self and Hansen’s screenplay for You’re Killing Me contextualizes the heightened social apathy towards killers while also playfully jabbing at how the brain dead, vapid mindsets of a group of L.A. friends and entertainers lands them unsuspectingly in the crosshairs of psychotic serial killer.
The most egotistical and shallow, yet most lovable, of them all is George (Self). One half of a YouTube comedy duo, George is oblivious that his new budding romance with Joe (Matthew McKelligon), a stranger who walks off the street to compliment his grocery choice, is a hardened serial killer. In George’s mind Joe’s matter of fact descriptions and confessions of murders and of his rocky, questionable past are nothing more than silly, repetitive jokes that Joe can’t help but make because it’s become his “thing” referring to Joe’s macabre humor. Though George’s friends question Joe’s stoic lack of social grace, George defends the prospective new lover by asserting that Joe “isn’t scary, he’s gorgeous.”
You’re Killing Me is a humorous satire capturing the crux of the millennial lifestyle and dating scene. George surrounds himself with people he can use as a reflector to always bring the conversation back to him. Within conversation among his group of friends exists a theatrical cadence and lack of attentive skill resulting in fast-paced quips that bounce around so much that it’s understandable why clear, long-form thought processes aren’t possible in George’s mind. George and his friends talk candidly about his relationship with Joe as well as the relationships of each other revealing a running theme of narcissism, lack of awareness, and unscrupulous jealousy. Side characters are fleshed out enough to give them their own personal flaws that results in unhealthy relationships and untimely deaths at Joe’s hands.
Hansen brings a stylistic flair that shoots the film into a hyperrealistic tone that embraces the era in which it is a product of. George and his best friend Teddy are a YouTube comedy duo that barely registers as a popular, yet these two are obsessed with the idea of getting famous through their videos. George reminds Teddy after each video that he thinks this one is “the one.” In the post-“Dexter” and celebratory mass killer society we exist in where the news makes idols of killers, the people of this film take murder as lightly as our 24-hour news cycle tends to do.
Our media circulates one story after the next releasing the images of murders and around the clock focus on the perpetrator and not the victims, and so does George as his friends and acquaintances get picked off one by one. Joe wins more favor with George after every murder revealing each one to George who is so struck by the image of Joe that he laughs off each admission chalking it to Joe’s silly humor. This star-struck lack of awareness calls to mind the the lesions of women who find themselves in the courtrooms of convicted serial killers or professing their love for monstrous murders (Ted Bundy, Robert Ramirez, the #FreeJahar fans of the Boston Marathon Bomber) completely glazing over the guilt and crimes committed by their crushes.
As viewers watch the body count rise, the characters of the film only occasionally mention the missing victims leaving them behind as if they are lost memories in the making. George and his friends also at times are completely desensitized to the carnage around them as seen in a brilliant scene where the group of the friends ride to dump the body of a person that has just been murdered. While riding a song comes on the radio and they all break out in a whimsical sing-a-long momentarily forgetting about the body in the trunk and the realization of the murders that have taken place. George’s own reaction to the unraveling of Joe is hilariously expected especially after Joe’s mother tells George “Joe is a very troubled boy and it reflects poorly on your character that you have not discerned this” to which George sheepishly responds “well Mom’s are usually my thing.”
Hansen uses Joe’s mental state to bring forth some incredible moments of direction and cinematography. Hansen’s visual eye follows a rhythmic pattern that closely aligns to the music featured throughout You’re Killing Me. Moments where in-sync beats correspond to match cuts not only transport the time and space of the film, but also shines an eye into the cityscape of L.A. The already handheld steady cam used to film the story nearly rocks with trepid anticipation before Joe commits his first murder.
Though he stays levelheaded and nearly emotionless, we see his first bit of satisfaction when he stabs his victim. The resulting scene emanates a radiance of euphoria as the lighting of the scene brightens refracting a glowing rainbow of colors to block off the frame. These moments of joy become a congruent trait of the film and exploration of Joe’s place of pleasure in other’s pain. You’re Killing Me is peppered with quick cuts into the mind of Joe; a white room in where he’s covered in blood as red tinted, fleshy, anatomical images rapidly flash by. These moments tow the line between disturbing and hilarious.
Unsurprisingly enough the internet plays a major role in these characters lives as they concentrate and obsess over the number of viewers the receive. This explains why these characters are so horrible at picking up on social cues, body language, honest truths that are spoken to them. You’re Killing Me takes an odd story and blends humor and satire into a Dario Argento inspired bloodbath. It won’t make you jump, or scream, but Joe’s brutality may make you squirm. More than anything You’re Killing Me will make you laugh at and with it while also contemplating how society has allowed George to reflect so many of us.
SEE IT. On iTunes, Vimeo On Demand, and WolfeOnDemand.com, and on DVD via Wolfe Video and many major retailers.
Isolation, Religious Zealot, and The Witch (2015)
Some of you will watch The Witch and find it to be an over indulgent, turtle-paced, poor excuse of a horror film. Some of you will watch The Witch and be completely spellbound by its placid enthralling tale that blurs the line between supernatural and mental psychosis. There won’t be any middle ground. Regardless of what camp you find yourself in The Witch is subversive and will evoke a strong reaction from you and that reaction should be examined and prodded.
I’m part of the latter camp. I thoroughly enjoyed Roger Eggert’s chill-inducing play on the folklore of witches in a time of scientific absence from society. Eggert’s screenplay follows a Puritan family headed by the husband, William, after their exiled from their village. Along with his wife, Katherine, the family must live on the outskirts of town cut off from community and support. Eggert uses their forced expulsion to patiently examine the portent effects that isolation has on the members of this God-fearing family. That isolation turns sinister when the family infant goes missing under the watch of the family’s eldest child, Thomasin. The comforting blanket of trust and support within this tight-knit family is quickly snagged unraveling into shards of shame, guilt, blame, anger, and fear during the film’s duration.
The religious candor of the family captures the zeitgeist of the Puritan era and every aspect of the their personal lives. The family continuously pray for the sins they are born with. They pray for sins they’ve committed in their heart. They beg forgiveness for sins they aren’t even sure they committed. By their accounts, God is always enacting his revenge or lessons onto this family leaving them stricken with grief and meekness. We watch as the fears of the parents seep into the minds of their children during one poignant scene in which the parents talk candidly about the troubles of their family.
While lamenting on their issues of failing crops and their missing child, Katherine weeps to William blaming the transgressions of the family on their sins of Thomasin’s inevitable maturing and the lost soul of their unbaptized infant. Eggert captures the scene with poignant tragedy in which a pan up through the ceiling reveals the children gathered around candlelight sheepishly listening to the judgement of their parents with fear and dejection. The scene iterates how the children’s own identities and worldviews are being shaped by their parent’s understanding of the world.
Eggert’s stunning visual cues creates a nefarious entity out of the woods in which the family lives outside of. Forbidden for reasons unknown to audiences, the woods becomes the home of supernatural events and the witch herself. It’s a place where only the children who enter it are enticed and sculpted by it. It’s a natural, animalistic chaotic place not meant for the refined, civilized family, not even for food as dictated by Katherine. Eggert’s filming techniques breathe life into the trees through slow zooms that melt into focused close-ups. As the tress seemingly take their breaths, I couldn’t help but hold mine in anticipation of what may come next. Mark Korven’s musical score is phenomenal finding inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s own score in The Shining. We hear the buzzing swells of sounds crescendoing into a chorus of voices and noise before hitting an unnerving peak, then swallowing in on itself blending separate scenes together and retreating back into stark silence. The Witch’s music, the lighting, the location, the tight close-ups, and moving shots all contribute to an air of mistrust and uncertainty.
The Witch has fantastical moments where the supernatural reigns supreme and is downright creepy. I argue that these otherworldly moments are visual manifestations of stories told in actual trials or through hearsay during the days of the witch trials. The film ends with an anecdote describing how the film’s inspiration was court documents and transcripts of witchcraft trials, as well as Eggert’s own childhood fascination with witches which is the reason he made this film. I think these elements makes for an important paradigm of the film’s supernatural elements.
Maybe the witch in the woods is real. Maybe the power of Lucifer is actually what consumes this devout family. Maybe God has sent a plague of Job-like proportions to test the family’s faith. Or maybe the witch-like apparitions and fears are all manifestations of a fear that haunt this family. Maybe The Witch is a coagulation of all these elements. Whatever it is, Eggert’s use of folklore to tell his story is a raging emotional ride that reminds us of the real people who were tortured, killed, or banished for the thought of practicing witchcraft in a time when an understanding of physical and psychological states weren’t logical assessments in the minds of the masses.
SEE IT. And fall into the time period and tone of the film.
Euzhan Palcy’s A Dry White Season (1989), Academy Awards, and The Future of Black Women Producing Film
For part 1 of this ongoing series, begin here.
Television and film slowly began to close the gap of racial and gender disparity in artistic control by the end of the 1980s. Though America struggled with social and wealth disparity in the age of Reganomics marred by the social implications of drug use and gang violence in inner cities. As these social ills climaxed, so did the rise of artistic reflections in urban areas. Hip hop became a widespread cultural phenomenon in which inner city poets reveled in detailing the sights of their lives and communities over danceable beats. Graffiti art became another outlet allowing urban artists to create something that resonated with them away from the confines of society’s preconceived notions of art. Filmmakers continued to seek refuge in moving pictures and Black women achieved greater success and accessibility in doing so.
For the first time in the history of cinema a Black woman received financial backing from a major motion picture to vocalize a story near to her heart in 1989. That woman was Martinique native Euzhan Palcy. Since childhood Palcy says she had a passion for directing formerly coaching her siblings through after-dinner plays. In 1977, Palcy left Martinique for Paris where she soon met famed French new-wave director François Truffaut. The two became friends and Truffaut’s fondness of Palcy benefited the budding director as he took her under his wing encouraging her to make her film debut Sugar Cane Alley in 1983. The film owed its bearings to a grant funded by the French government and Sugar Cane Alley quickly grew legs resulting in widespread international acclaim. Sugar Cane Alley interlaces a young Black orphan’s coming of age with the harsh realities of race relations in 1930s Martinique on the fields of a sugar cane plantation.
Palcy’s bold story and rich subject manner impressed Hollywood so much that producers immediately scrambled to win her attention. “That’s what they do, as soon as a filmmaker comes out with a big movie that makes a lot of money, has big success, they want to work with you” Palcy said of Warner Brothers’ attempts to work with her. Unimpressed with the idea of Hollywood, Palcy declined working with the company and instead traveled to Sundance as a handpicked guest of actor and Sundance Film Festival founder, Robert Redford. Redford had seen Sugar Cane Alley and was so impressed that he wanted to treat her as a guest at Sundance quickly becoming a close confident of Palcy. Before arriving at Sundance, Palcy had finished reading the controversial tale of two families suffering under the affects of the apartheid in South Africa. She immediately adapted a screenplay from the book A Dry White Season. When she told Redford of the many offers she had received along with her new script he convinced her to try her chances in Hollywood. Palcy offered her script to Warner Brothers before MGM ultimately accepted allowing her to direct the film herself.
Palcy took her role seriously as a screenwriter and director for the project. She took care of the story with a pregnant delicacy being sure to capture the book’s hardships and the very real negative aspects of the apartheid. Palcy wanted an established actor the film’s lead role to ensure that it’d have the staying power she confidently knew it would. She offered the part to Marlon Brando who was so marveled by the screenplay that he offered to do the film for free. Palcy’s direction earned Brando his 8th and last nomination for Best Supporting Actor and A Dry White Season went on to become a sensation acclaimed by critics and film goers while getting banned in South Africa. Looking back on her career in an interview with Indiewire, Palcy recalls the challenges of working on A Dry White Season and how her conviction and determination to not budge on structural, important aspects of the film helped her keep her dignity and make the film she wanted to make.
In L.A. the movement of Black filmmakers of UCLA continued its powerhouse of production. Zeinabu irene Davis, Alile Sharon Larkin, and Melvonna Ballenger were among the most successful and well-known students creating films rooted in New Wave techniques, stream of conscious narrative, and focusing on problems relating to the women who led the focus of their films. All of the films created by these women of the era made didn’t shy away from the history of those who made it. Often times these films encapsulated the hardships of navigating through America while being Black. These women showed a powerful creativity and self-assurance in their films which paved the way for greatness in the years to come of our present standing where female directors like Ava DuVernay, Kasi Lemmons, Gina Price Blythewood, Amma Asante, Darnell Martin and many more have achieved great success and sole artistic merit in delivering their stories. These women thrive because of the tireless hard work of Tessie Sounders, Maria P. Williams, Eloyce Gist and the many other, unsung and unrecognized Black women in the motion picture making industry.
Despite the success for Black women directors, producers, and screenwriters from the 1980s on until now, the recognition and accolades for women of color in Hollywood is still on a painstakingly slow crawl. To this day, not one single woman of African descent has gotten nominated for Best Director and we have yet to see another woman of color take a singular win for Screenplay. Moreover, Hollywood still lacks a colorful bouquet of faces backing, creating, and telling stories of their choice to the audiences at large. But as last night’s Academy Awards ceremony showcased to the masses the conversations are finally taking place and are challenging the status quo. Hollywood’s shut out of people of color and its division between the genders is continually getting critiqued for the greater good of art and race relations. It may be slow crawl to the finish line of racial and gender equality, but the more we know of our past the more we can demand of our present to secure equality for all in a promising future.
Further Reading:
Gray, Herman. Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness. Minnesota: University Of Minnesota Press. 2004
Rising Success in 1970s and the Clamor for Self-Representation
For part 1 of this ongoing series, begin here.
A small number of women within the African diaspora worked steadily behind the scenes throughout the 1970s receiving very little credit or mainstream attention for their work. These women worked valiantly owing their persistence to the passionate desire of self-expression and wanting to showcase personal stories relevant to them despite being able to immediately affect the greater population. The filmmakers of the “L.A. Rebellion” scene continued making small budget shorts and experimental pieces, while in mainstream cinema a trend flourished around the Blaxploitation genre. Though highly popular and responsible for bringing actresses Pam Grier, Theresa Graves (who made waves as an undercover detective in the network drama series “Get Christie Love!”) and Tamara Dobson to the eye line of movie goers and television audiences at the time, Blaxploitation films were often written, directed, and produced by white men. Similar to “Race” films a few decades prior, Blaxploitation looked to exploit the successful, initially Black produced independent genre of films in turn for a guaranteed profit return from Black audience members.
African-Americans looking to the screen for authentic representations of themselves found such images sparse and largely underrepresented. Many Black actors continued to face challenges when auditioning for roles as the stereotypes for African-Americans shifted from mammies, servants, and uncle Toms to drug users, street hustlers, pimps, and sex workers. Fortunately, mainstream Hollywood continued to feature prominent Black actresses in their films including Rudy Dee, Diana Ross, Diahann Carroll, Rosalind Cash, and Cicely Tyson during the 1970s. Carroll received a nomination for Best Actress for her 1974 performance in Claudine, while Tyson and Ross’ stunning performances in the 1972 films Sounder and Lady Sings the Blues respectively earned the ladies Academy Award nominations for Best Actress during the 45th Academy Awards. This marked the first time that two African-American women shared a nomination in the same category. That year Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather took the stage for Marlon Brando’s win for Best Actor and delivered a powerful speech against the representation of Native Americans in film and television. This harrowing speech encouraged and validated twitter user April Reign’s recent hashtag #OscarsSoWhite along with Jada Pinkett Smith’s call to boycott this year’s 88th Academy Awards.
Television provided Black women with rising visibility including Irene Cara, Debbie Morgan, Ester Rolls, Ja’net DuBois, Leslie Uggams, Paula Kelley, and Bern Nadette Stanis. Every one of these actresses and more made a mark on the series and films they starred in. Nevertheless,the access for Black women wanting to create their on stories in Hollywood wasn’t as easily permissible and many were stalled at the door by gender and racial biases that continued to permeate the air. But, a few Black women managed to squeak past sensors of sameness and received the opportunity to financially support or create stories in their own voices.
One of the country’s largest and successful record labels, Motown, housed a powerful weapon and gem by the name of Suzanne De Passe. She joined Motown in the late 1960s as label head Berry Gordy’s creative assistant and is credited for introducing the Jackson 5 to Gordy. According to the American Program Bureau, De Passe also brought the talents of The Temptations, The Commodores, Rick James, and deBarge to the company. Throughout the 70s De Passe proved that her talents covered more than just her capabilities of scouting musical talents. In 1972 she co-wrote the script for the critically acclaimed biography of Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues. The script earned her and her team of writers an Academy Award Nomination for best original screenplay.
De Passe went on to produce successful television specials, mini-series, made for television movies, and series for major networks and studios from the 1970s forward. She founded her own production in 2008 and is currently working on a handful of projects including a film on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with collaboration from Steven Spielberg. De Passe’s success in the 1970s is one of the rarities for Black women working behind the scenes at the time. Across the waters in Britain a small fraction of Black women were making strides in having their creative work delivered to the masses under much different circumstances.
Racism and gender basis remained a reason for the absence of Black women in front and behind the camera in Britain during the 70s, but resilience proved fruitful for a few women. Nigerian born writer Buchi Emecheta arrived in London in 1962 following her husband through an arranged marriage. Living unhappily with five children to support, Emecheta began writing about her experiences later submitting them to British cultural magazine New Statesman. Her collections in the publication became the contents of her first book In the Ditch in 1972 (Malik). After putting herself through university, Emecheta gained success as a novelist traveling the world leading lecturers and writing children’s stories.
Emecheta wrote two plays during the early part of her career, one of which received adaptation on British television. At the time, the most successful route a Black writer could aspire towards was theater. Black British writers looking to emerge and develop could do so through stage plays and radio which were known to take risker chances than television. The theme of these plays were often dramatic as it was passé for Black writers to engage in comedic writings during the 1960s and 70s. Emecheta fortunately had her play “A Kind of Marriage,” a daytime drama, aired on British television in 1976. She also wrote an episode for the popular court drama “Crown Court” towards the end of the decade (Bourne 207.)
Buchi Emecheta
At first glance these women seem confined by history to a box in time that marks them as the few documented women of color to have made major strides in the realm of creating for film and television. But these women are more than names in a time frame within history. They were hallmarks who helped usher in continuous success and rising visibility behind projects for women of African descent. The 1980s would polish even more Black women and bring forth incredible films in which they could tell their personal and rarely seen perspectives. “Black women all over the world should re-unite and re-examine the way history has portrayed us” Emecheta famously wrote. Her words are a reminder to myself and all Black women out there that our history is important and should continue to get exalted.
Bourne, Stephen. Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television: Black People in British Film and Television, 1896-1996. A&C Black, 2005.
Malik, Sarita. Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television. London: Sage Publications, 2002.
Taraborrelli, J. Randy. Diana Ross: A Biography. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp, 2007.
The Cinephiliac 