My first year in film school at Columbia University, I felt like an outsider. Everybody kept making reference to “classic” films that every film student should know, and I just felt lost. Growing up as a little girl in New Jersey, my criteria for what made a good film were quite simple: kids, music, and black people. If a movie had any combination of these three things, it automatically made my “A” list. Needless to say, films like E.T. (kids), Annie (more kids and music), The Color Purple (black people), and Krush Groove (some kids, a whole lot of black people and a whole lot of music) ranked high on my list of “classics.” I loved to be entertained, but I also loved to identify. I loved seeing people on the screen who looked like me, who had the same interests as me, and reflected the early hip-hop, 80s pop, MTV culture in which I grew up.
Something changed in 1989. That’s right, it was “1989, a number, another summer, the sound of a funky drummer…” It was the year Spike Lee’s critically acclaimed film Do the Right Thing was released in theaters all across the country. From the opening shot of Rosie Perez’s frantic, combative dance on a red-hued Brooklyn street to the pulsing beat of that Public Enemy song “Fight the Power”, I knew I was about to experience something raw and unforgiving. I had seen several Spike Lee films prior to this one, but something about this one was different.
As a teenager, I remember people on the news expressing concern about this film. They were worried that it would cause race riots and violence, and gave warnings about going to see it during opening weekend. At that time, racially motivated hate crimes and police brutality were already a constant source of news around New York City (see Eleanor Bumpers, Howard Beach, Michael Stewart), so the concerns didn’t totally fall on deaf ears. However, at the end of this film, there were no riots. There were no words. We filed out in silence, shocked, amazed and pissed about what we had just witnessed.
I went home that night and I couldn’t get the images of Radio Raheem being choked to death out of my head. I was conflicted about Mookie throwing the garbage can through Sal’s pizzeria. And as I went to sleep that night, I couldn’t escape the redundant cries of Mother Sister shouting “No!” as her beloved neighborhood went up in flames. I didn’t leave that theater feeling good. Instead I was outraged, I was horrified, I was angry. And I loved every bit of it. A revolution had just taken place. This was my introduction to real cinema that made me feel something in my chest, cinema that went beyond the dancing and singing and pierced through my heart.
For me, twenty four years later, Spike Lee’s film still redefines the meaning of a “classic” film. However, Do the Right Thing came behind a long tradition of African American filmmakers who used film as a weapon of protest and awareness for their community and for the world at large.
There was the Lincoln Motion Picture Company of the 1910s, which was the first black-run production company that allowed people to see African Americans in more than just slapstick comedic roles. Then there was Oscar Micheaux, the successful black director who made “race films” in the 1920s and 30s.
By the 1960s and 70s there was the Black Independent Cinema Movement, which produced filmmakers who wanted to challenge the rash of blaxploitation films that was starting to become known as “black cinema”. This movement, which also spilled into the 1980s, was unique in that it featured a conglomerate of artists who worked together to challenge the status quo and make films that would reflect the realities of black life. Many of the films drew attention to the social discourse that was prevalent during that time surrounding the Civil Rights Movement, women’s rights, black nationalism, communism, racism, poverty, and war. Other films told stories about family life and relationships.
Emerging around the same time as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing was Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger (1990) and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991). Both films dealt with family identity and what it means to be black in America. In To Sleep with Anger, a middle class black family in South Central Los Angeles struggles with the complexities that come with maintaining upward mobility, while deciding which of their southern cultural traditions to hold onto. Burnett’s award-winning film incorporates storytelling and mysticism in the classic folk-tale tradition, giving audiences a glimpse into some of the superstitions seen and lived in black family life.
Daughters of the Dust, which is set in 1902, centers around the Peazant family, descendants of slaves on St. Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina. The time has come for them to consider moving to the north, and most of the family is excited about the transition, but a few are highly skeptical. Its poetic cinematography transports the audience in and out of the dreams of the Unborn Child, who was conceived out of rape from a white plantation owner. The Unborn Child serves as the narrator of the film, and is able to see the past, present and future. She is the connection to the wisdom of the ancestors as the family wrestles through the implications of this important move. Daughters is a beautifully stunning film that broke new ground, becoming the first feature film by an African American woman to have a theatrical release.
Julie Dash’s earlier short film, Illusions (1982), explored the territory of blacks “passing” for white within Hollywood’s studio system. In this film, Dash challenged the American standards of beauty, by exposing the injustice behind the industry practice of showcasing white actresses as leads for musicals, while hiring black singers to hide in recording booths and sing the actual vocals.
These films, and others that were part of the Black Independent Cinema Movement, challenged the notion of identity when trying to define a culture. While Hollywood had its own ideas of what it meant to be black in America, these filmmakers were showing their reality to the world. Not only that, but they were showing the world that African Americans are not a monolith. We have varying ideals and experiences that make us all unique.
But the biggest impact of the movement was in the spirit of what they represented – a challenge to the status quo, a wake-up call to look at the world differently. That challenge is available to all, not just African Americans looking to reverse stereotypes. The art and beauty of film is that it has the power to entertain, but it also has the power to be a weapon that brings awareness as it did in Do the Right Thing and its predecessors.
A “classic” is defined as “a work of art of recognized and established value.” It was these types of films that encouraged me the most to become a filmmaker, making them “classics” in my book. My own ethic as a filmmaker of faith has been largely shaped by these films, giving me a desire to tell my truth, to add my voice as an African American woman, to “shake things up”, and hopefully cause people to take another look at life and see the truths that God is speaking through it.
Even in a Christian context, film can still be used as a weapon to challenge culture, to break stereotypes, and tear down barriers to growth and understanding. The cultural issues that existed during the 60s and 70s still exist, and many new problems have arisen since then. With everything that we face in our world today, film is a means to bring awareness and create dialogue around the issues that no one else wants to talk about. That was the power of the movement, and that, for me, is still the power of film.
Avril Speaks has over seventeen years of experience as a filmmaker, scholar, and educator. She is currently studying at Fuller Theological Seminary and working toward a PhD in Theology and Culture. Her ultimate goal is to diversify the film market by educating and empowering aspiring artists; thereby creating a movement of media that represents the true, multi-dimensional qualities of people and speaks to the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, or at her blog.
