Exporting Terror: A Review of Damani Baker’s “The House on Coco Road”
By Wanda Sabir

Damani Baker’s “The House on Coco Road” (2016) opened the Matatu Film Festival this year. The award-winning director, said he’d always dreamed of having a film screen at the historic Grand Lake Theatre. It was literal homecoming with many of the Baker clan and extended family in the house that night in the sold-out main theatre.  Baker brings to his beloved Oakland, a love letter to his son, with kisses sprinkled along the path of his courageous mother, Fannie Haughton, who decides to move her two children from Oakland to Grenada in 1983.  His father, Prestin Baker, Oakland firefighter, tells the director, he had to look Grenada up on the map to see where his family was going.  When the young divorcee arrives in the black nation, she and her two children are welcomed by Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, and other founding members of the New Jewel Movement.

Though the story takes the personal history of the Haughtons via Damani Baker, to tell a larger story of imperialism, capitalism and a reign of terror African people continue to suffer wherever greed is more valuable than human life, the narrative is never lost nor the lesson couched within the story, which is, the importance of knowing one’s history. “Somebody forgot to tell somebody something,” Damani says somewhat like a mantra, as he sorts, catalogs and complies the boxes of cassette tapes, reels of film, to watch and listen as he searches for a through line which connects his past to his present.

The archival footage the director discovers in a box at his mother’s house is just what he needs to complete a story begun many years earlier. In the box Damani finds cassette tapes of PM Bishop’s speeches, photos of himself and his sister in Grenada, Angela Davis’s speech during Women’s History Month—the year when Fannie decided to leave America for good. It is a treasure trove, especially the photos and footage his grandfather had of Fannie as a child with her sisters and as a teen, dressed up for church and in her cheerleading uniform.

Coco Road is the street named after his great grandmother in Louisiana where her family had been enslaved. Like many freed blacks, the Haughtons stayed on as sharecroppers harvesting potatoes. In a conversation with his great grandmother the director learns the owner of the land would have the families picking potatoes 24/7. However, over the years, Damani’s kinfolk acquired land, but Fannie’s dad left the south for Los Angeles where he raised his girls.  The first black family to buy a house in their neighborhood, a KKK calling card alerted Mr. Haughton to the dangers his family might suffer. Damani’s grandmother could not stay at home when her husband went to work each day. She had to pack up the children who were not in school and go over to a friend’s house.

We listen and watch as the director explores this body of work—his mother’s life, something tangible, yet abstract.  There are silences and spaces Mama Haughton does not allow him to see. This behavior part of a historic tendency to shield one’s loved ones from what is painful. Yet, for a young man trying to collect himself, looking to fashion a body politic comprised of all his legacies, good and bad, he needed answers. At first, Baker stumbles blindly without guidance; however, as he continues along the path, Esu Elegba opens the road – from Southern Louisiana to Southern California to Northern California to St. Georges Island, Grenada back to Oakland — this literal mapping or embodiment helps Baker put his family’s story into a contextual dialogue or dialectic.
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The story of his mother’s meeting with Angela Davis, becoming her TA, the alliance between the Black Student Union and the LA Chapter of the Black Panther Party, especially when John Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter were killed, George and Jonathan Jackson, her heading up the Free Angela Campaign, travel to Cuba, COINTELPRO, a teaching career, the move to Oakland, plus the allies and comrades she met and befriended, is why “The House on Coco Road” was a long overdue reunion of friends and family opening night of the Matatu Film Festival which is October 12-15, 2016.

As we sat spellbound in the theatre participating in the harrowing events of the US bombing of the island nation—Damani and his little sister playing under a four poster bed, its mattress covering windows so the glass would not fly into the room—as they heard the sounds of bombs and heavy artillery as planes flew above. It became clear that if Reagan could fabricate events to justify the annihilation of a peaceful nation independent of the bully to the north, then all wars were suspect starting with the recently ended Vietnam War, one Damani’s father served in to his chagrin.

When the director, his mother and Yvonne Belfon (who lived with the family then) return to their island home in 1999, 16 years later, he learns of the trauma his mother experienced in Grenada and in her reception back home after the US attack.  She told him of the media blackout for the first three days, which almost ensured no counter narrative. Racing for time and her children’s lives, Damani’s mother stuffs all she can carry into a duffle bag.  One of the items she saves from this period that Damani discovers (when he embarks on his treasure hunt) is the letter he wrote his father telling him about the bombing, the four mile walk to the airplane, and their escape.

Meshell Ndegeocello composed the score while Damani who wears all the hats: writer, producer, executive producer, director of photography shares the stage with long time collaborator Jon Fine (writer, editor), sister, Eisa Davis (writer), Rogelio González-Abraldes (director of photography), Cameron Russell (writer), and producers: Danny Glover, Belvie Rooks, and Max Osterweis.

“House on Coco Road” is Damani Baker’s personal and familial history, his coming of age at a time we thought the definitive story had already been written about the Cold War, but how many know what happened in Grenada? How many black men can say they met their first black president at ten (10)? That he shook his hand.— “The House on Coco Road” is invaluable for the untold stories it reveals, such as a behind the scenes look at the Free Angela Davis story.  Damani Baker lifts the voices of black women and gives them a vehicle to tell their stories: his mother, great grandmother, grandmother and black men: his grandfather and father, and where present, his own.

We are so thrilled Damani did tell somebody (smile).

 

Troubled Legacy: A Review of Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation (2016)
By Wanda Sabir

Perhaps the reason why Nat Turner is almost completely buried within documented and oral histories is connected to the fear his rebellion caused in the Southampton and by extension the southern antebellum community. Nate Parker’s “The Birth of a Nation” visits this story as Donald Trump draws a white male constituency very much in keeping philosophically with the angry mob who tear the flesh from the iconic Prophet Nat Turner’s body. Parker’s “Birth” unearths a taboo. He pulls the sheets off mirrors and opens the doors to a Big House where he leans over vomiting out all things he has had to swallow since captivity.

Yet, with this purging comes personal consequences for the director. Nate Parker’s life is held against an ethical microscope and found wanting. Would Nat Turner object to Nate Parker’s embodiment? While an imprisoned Nat Turner is interrogated by his court appointed attorney, Thomas Gray, whose edited transcription appears as: “The Confessions of Nat Turner” (1831), another white writer takes this document and writes a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” (1967) where he inserts a fictitious white woman into the Turner narrative. This tampering with history is widely contested by the black community in the book: “William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond” (1968) by John Henrik Clarke and Lerone Bennett Jr. and Alvin F. Poussaint and Vincent Harding and John Oliver Killens and John A. Williams and Ernest Kaiser and Loyle Hairston and Charles V. Hamilton and Mike Thelwell.

All black men want white women, right? This is the dangling carrot which proved deadly to 19 year old Nate Parker.  There is no such thing as consensual sex between a black man and a white woman. If the scale tips and her consent evaporates, the Black lover is charged and imprisoned. Parker stated “[i]n his statement to [Pennsylvania] University, [that Detective] Weaver told him that he was a former collegiate athlete himself and knew the temptations to sleep with a “sports groupie.” [Parker] also claimed the detective then threatened him, “You wrestlers for the past 10 years have raped and battered this whole town. I’m going to get you.”[1]

Litigation sits at the center of both stories, miring the proposed outcome, justice and freedom for black people.

“The Confessions of Nat Turner” published after his death, is based on a “confession” Turner gave to his court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Gray, shortly before his execution. Gray later published the document. Styron wrote that the Turner he found in Gray’s text was a “dangerous religious lunatic . . . a psychopathic monster”[,] [so] rather than expand on the historical record, he chose to write a meditation on history, giving him ‘dimensions of humanity that were almost totally absent in the documentary evidence.’ In the novel, Turner is a young slave brought up as a domestic servant in the household of a wealthy, altruistic plantation owner who decides to teach Turner to read as proof that slaves are capable of ‘cultivation.’ In Styron’s depiction, Turner is pious, even saintly, with no romantic entanglements other than a chaste attachment to a young white woman who secretly holds abolitionist views.[2]

Rob Sloan, Associate Editor, reason.com writes, “[I]t doesn’t strike me as fair to blame Parker or [Jean] Celestin, [‘Birth of a Nation’ co-writer], for Jennifer’s death. The article notes that Jennifer suffered from bouts of depression even before the alleged rape took place. Before her death, she was confined to a mental institution. She alternately believed she was Satan, or Jesus Christ. She accused her sister of kidnapping her and was clearly suffering from mental illness.”

In Turner’s “Birth of a Nation,” we watch the young, then older Nat Turner (Oct. 2, 1800-Nov. 11, 1831), witness situations where white men treat other human beings brutally.  Despite what he sees on his plantation where he is taught to read, plays with the young master, then as an adult preaches the Gospel to other enslaved Africans, it is when Turner travels to other Virginia plantations and sees the ill treatment meted out to black people that he begins to explore other texts in the bible.

Guided initially by his mistress to study specific texts to the exclusion of others, these texts ones which exhort the captives to obey their cruel masters and rejoice in their pending everlasting lives. It is when Nat reads the entire book, (which is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture) he learns that unlike the God he had previously called on, there is an aspect to this divine being he’d completely missed.

Nat Turner’s critical reading of the bible as a gospel of liberation, rather than a tool to justify his people’s enslavement, should have been cause for white Southerners to reflect on their misdeeds and perhaps end this system.  Think again. What Turner faces when brought to the gallows is rage, rage towards this black beast[3] who dared upset the power dynamic. “Enraged white militias and mobs killed more than 200 black people in the course of putting down the 48 hour rebellion,” and they are still killing us.[4]

“Birth of a Nation” comes at a pivotal time in US history: the end of the term for the first black president, President Obama’s term replete with state sanctioned violence against black citizens, similar to that experienced during Jim Crow and prior to this, enslavement.  In a “New Yorker” magazine review and on a recent “60 Minutes” segment, the director’s moral reputation is questioned, his responses inadequate thus discarded despite the case’s dismissal 17 years ago. When I decided to see the film, I hadn’t known of the compelling court documents which show the victim’s inebriated state and questions her ability to consent to a sexual act while unconscious nor had I read published statements from the victim’s brother and sister. I hadn’t known she was 18 at the time and suffered depression thereafter resulting two years ago in a successful suicide. I dismissed the unearthing of this case as mere media slander, and I still wonder at the timing—why hasn’t it come up before? I understand why the film is being boycotted by many men and women who base the film’s aesthetic merits on the ethical reputation of its lead actor and director, an unfair or unevenly applied judgement. I will let Nate and Nat battle this one out.[5]

To his credit, Turner expresses regret and compassion for his accuser when he learns recently of her suicide in 2014 at the age of 30:

“I look back on that time, my indignant attitude and my heartfelt mission to prove my innocence with eyes that are more wise with time. I see now that I may not have shown enough empathy even as I fought to clear my name. Empathy for the young woman and empathy for the seriousness of the situation I put myself and others in.

I cannot change what has happened. I cannot bring this young woman who was someone else’s daughter, someone’s sister and someone’s mother back to life…

I have changed so much since nineteen. I’ve grown and matured in so many ways and still have more learning and growth to do. I have tried to conduct myself in a way that honors my entire community – and will continue to do this to the best of my ability.

All of this said, I also know there are wounds that neither time nor words can heal.”

In the New Yorker critique, “Birth” is juxtaposed with “12 Years a Slave” (2013) and “D’Jango Unchained,” dir. Quentin Tarantino, starring Jamie Foxx (2012)—D’Jango’s a farce, with a wild wild west troupe, the other a film a documentary based on the Solomon Northup story. Its director, Steven Rodney “Steve” McQueen (British). It starred Chiwetel Ejiofor, Igbo, born in Britain. The parallels between “Birth” and either of these two films is apparent, as they both look at the story of enslavement; however, the Nat Turner Rebellion illustrated in Parker’s “Birth,” is a story of redemption and triumph. In Parker’s skilled hands as director and actor, we see a story never witnessed on screen before.

Perhaps another reason this film is troublesome, according to Professor Leslie M. Alexander, Ph.D., Ohio State University, in a Nation magazine article, is “that [the director] misrepresents Turner and his rebellion, sends insidious messages about slavery and [ignores] the multifaceted roles of black women in the battle for freedom.”

The scholar specializing in 19^th century Black culture and historic accuracy in film states, “Despite Parker’s bluster about Nat Turner’s heroism and his claims to historical accuracy, he failed to provide a truthful rendering of Nat Turner’s life, his rebellion, or the experience of black people during slavery. As a result, Parker and Jean Celestin pimped black suffering for financial gain and proved that they have no respect for black history or for the people who fought for our freedom.”

The $17.5 million deal from Fox Searchlight, the largest deal at the Sundance film festival to date is a financial coup; however, at what cost, Alexander asks? How much of his soul did Parker relinquish? If we follow the money, does“Birth” leads us in a circular path which ends with black folks in chains? Maybe not.

The heroic “folk hero” Nat Turner “remained in the mouths of Black Virginians [like Cornelia Carney, b. 1838] for generations,” Michigan State historian Vanessa M. Holden states. “Carney was born seven years after the rebellion took place . . . [and] when Carney gave her interview a century after those violent days, Black Virginians were still facing awful times. A reminder that survival, resistance, and perseverance were possible must not have escaped her. Her father’s survival and Nat Turner’s successful rebellion remained married through a folk expression that an interviewer from the government would put in a book somewhere. Nat Turner, it seems, was still truant and lying out in the minds of Black Virginians.”

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Audre Lorde calls this altering historic outcomes in a way that restores one’s agency biomythology. Yet, if Parker’s revisioning of this historic scene – the taking of the armory, when in fact, the men were captured before, mere manipulation, while at the same time ignoring a network of support a revolt of such magnitude contained, the women, youth and free blacks—then one has to ask, to what end or for what purpose are such details omitted? Parker says he marketed the film “on legacy, [not necessarily Southampton legacy, according to scholar Vanessa Holden].”[6] However, the monetary legacy this film follows includes kinfolk: “Twelve Years a Slave” and “Selma” “absent of Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael and James Forman, [the lineage a] part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire, now looking to shape what the young and potential future Turners might think about rebellion.  And not one of that empire’s properties, including the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, have or will offer any assistance to or support for Turner’s political descendants still looking to finish his work” states Jared Bell, multimedia host, producer, journalist and educator, in “Rebirth of a Nation Within a Nation.

Holden says, “It is easy to list the details of the historical Southampton Rebellion that Parker did not accurately portray, and there are many such details. But what deserves more critical attention is Parker’s insistence on creating an extraordinary black male hero. By crafting of a narrative that depicts a hero made in his own image, Parker fails to explore two of the most compelling features of the historical Southampton Rebellion: the ordinariness of slavery’s evil and the vast resistive network of “heroes” needed to pull off a violent slave revolt. Slavery was awful. It was not only awful on some plantations or in some households or at the hands of a few purely evil masters. It was awful in even the most everyday moments in an enslaved man, woman, or child’s life. All of the enslaved people who survived under the slave regime did so because they resisted slavery every day. That is why Cornelia Carney saw Nat Turner in her father and her father in Nat Turner. In the folk tradition where ‘Ole Nat’ survived, Nat Turner was not one slave but every slave.”[7] He was the hope, enslaved Africans dreamed of.

In an age when historic realities can be doctored and/or created in the studio or on a laptop, then presented as fact, it makes one question the validity or usefulness of staging Nat Turner’s story in 2016 inaccurately when a more accurate depiction might have been more powerful, but maybe not marketable in a white supremacist marketplace. Lots of black people suffer in Parker’s “Birth,” the victory short lived in comparison. The moment of glory fleeting – a signature American flag at its close with child who betrays Nat Turner now a Union soldier battling against the system of slavery. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation makes insurrection legal now. Is Parker saying with this ending to a spliced epic—it’s okay to revolt when the government is on your side? Look how long this union lasted. The ink had barely dried on the page before Reconstruction was over and the soldiers in the South returned to the north and slavery returned in the guise of Black Codes and Jim Crow.

Black men are shown in “Birth” caring for their families, yet, unable to protect them from violation. When Nat has to resist an urge to avenge his wife’s violation, his restraint shows a larger vision for an emancipated or free people. Revenge would have briefly satisfied just one man, and benefited him alone not all his people.

“Bruce Turner, a retired computer analyst, says Nat Turner, his great-great-great grandfather is a hero because ‘he saw an opportunity to try to correct something that was an extremely bad evil.’ He believes Nat Turner was a freedom-fighter who started a movement that helped end the institution of slavery. ‘Prior to the insurrection, slave owners actually believed that the slaves were happy in their condition,’ he says. ‘Nat Turner changed that.’”[8]

All it takes is one. Turner’s brief yet effective counterargument made slave owners insecure and nervous for the rest of their days. In 48 hours, more white people were killed than at any other time in antebellum history.

The director stirs latent genetic memories with the work. “Birth” is not a pleasant somatic excursion. There is nothing redemptive about this period. Slavery was violent. This country founded on such violence continues to sample this song and this story. “Strange Fruit” takes on eerie and prescient meaning in “Birth.”  The atrocities then and now are connected to the absence of agency granted to black bodies.  This troubles the young Nat,[9] but he is well-trained, so he continues to turn the other cheek and close his mind’s eye to these viscerally painful contradictions. He is mute when a friend asks, “Where is your God now?” when the man’s (actor Coleman Domingo) wife is raped by his master’s guest. Turner later trembles when he cannot protect his own wife, yet bows his head and continues to obey. We wonder where this fortitude is located.  Yet, once Nat realizes that his faith was not absolute, that he’d been standing on half-truths and lies—he begins to remember the dreams and nightmares from childhood, and the predictions regarding his greatness and the prophecy waiting to be fulfilled, what his father told him about greatness. So Nat (31) calls a meeting, then waits for a sign. The bloody corn on screen, the solar eclipse and other details highlighted in the film figure authentically in the historic story.

I do not think it a coincidence that Nate Parker (36) would direct this film which stars black American actors. It is an important story only a man who grew up in a community not far removed from the events of this story could tell, and tell well.  Parker’s young mother (17) might have also contemplated what kind of life her son would inherit, when she decided to keep him.  The same is true of the actual Nat Turner’s mother who had decided not to bring a child into captivity.

There is a spirit that resides in place which haunts these spaces when unresolved issues remain unaddressed.  It is not by chance that all the slave shacks were burned down following the insurrection, the county seat Jerusalem renamed, yet the sight of a beheading of a rebellious African remains. “[T]he street located outside Courtland, Virginia, bears the name Blackhead Signpost Road.[10]The only trace of Nat Turner is a small sign on a road.  His silencing was nearly completed, yet with a film whose title conjures D.E. Griffith’s 1915 Clansman renamed Birth of a Nation, Nat Turner is back. A conversation about black resistance can and does challenge black victimhood. Parker’s “Birth” could be seen philosophically as a rebirth, a rebirth of a black nation still connected to its African heritage and to a legacy larger than this temporary episode called slavery.

“Birth” is a reminder of humanity’s capacity and right to freedom at all costs.  Parker’s film is counter narrative or aesthetic response, and its tremor certainly shifts the scale. His Birth is a revolutionary story. The symbol or principle the rebel represents is justice or Maat.  At a time when black men are being gunned down indiscriminately or captured then enslaved, at a time when the front runner for presidential officer has a white supremacist as chief advisor, at a time when the largest prison strike in history is proceeding unnoticed due to media silence—Nat Turner might be what it takes to stir the waters just a bit, enough to start a tidal wave, just enough to make those on the ground think creatively about military strategy.

The Black Panther Party was successful for a reason. Party members bore arms and knew how to use them. This in itself leveled the judicial hierarchy until Governor Reagan passed laws which made it illegal to do so. Birth is a story of resistance and self-defense situated within the context of a black or African spiritual system. Dreams and visions reoccur throughout the film. A worried mother takes a young Nat to the elders for a reading. Later, he recalls their prophecy as he stands painted in ritual white clay at the center of the crossroads. The sacred and profane inhabit this world, a world repulsive and inhuman. Somehow, though, African ancestors knew the known world was not the only world and that white people were not in charge. Seeing beyond these temporal barriers, our ancestors found hope and resisted. Turner’s Nat, whom he portrays with sensitivity and authenticity is supported by an excellent cast featuring Armie Hammer, Aja Naomi King, Jackie Earle Haley, Penelope Ann Miller and Gabrielle Union in supporting roles.

The director says of his film, which opened October 7 nationally, to arts critic Brennan Williams, Huffington Post: “. . .  I honestly think this is a film that could start a conversation that can promote healing and systemic change in our country. There’s so many things that are happening right now in 2015—100 years after the original ‘Birth of a Nation’ film, here we are. I’d say that is what I hope sets my film apart, is that it’s relevant now—that people will talk about this film with the specific intention of change.”

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/08/16/inside-the-nate-parker-rape-case.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/books/review/Row-t.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

[3] Representative of a larger fear which fuels COINTELPRO from the Hon. Marcus Garvey, Martin King and Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), to Mumia Abu Jamal and Stanley “Tookie” Williams. All potential black messiah types continue to be slandered, killed, imprisoned or both.

[4] Gray White, Deborah (2013). Freedom on my mind: A history of African Americans. New York Bedford/St. Martin’s. p. 225.

[5] Read http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/08/what-would-nat-turner-do/2/

[6] http://www.processhistory.org/holden-birth-of-a-nation/

[7] Ibid.

[8] Turner is responding to 60 Minutes correspondent, Anderson Cooper’s question: Is Nat Turner a hero?

[9] “Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property” (2002) is the title of Charles Burnett’s documentary.

[10] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/nat-turner-slave-rebellion-legacy/

 

 

This Maafa Commemoration Month we continue to lift “A Love Supreme” as we organize a defense against state violence. Congratulations to Professor Aaliyah Dunn-Salahuddin whose community vigil and program honored the lives of the Bayview Hunter’s Point revolutionaries killed 50 years ago and more recently like Mathew “Peanut” Johnson.

The Maafa Commemoration Ritual is Sunday, October 9, 5:30 AM. Visit maafasfbayarea.com or call (510) 255-5579. We need monetary donations to defray costs, as well as volunteers for set up and clean-up. This is a commemoration for African Ancestors of the Middle Passage. Maafa is Kiswahili for great calamity and reoccurring disaster and references the Black Holocaust which continues as black life is devalued, desecrated and discarded. This is an opportunity for people of African Descent, a global people of black Diaspora to recognize our shared community despite the dispersement, to acknowledge the blood memories we all hold. We are still one people, one nation – as the Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey states and we can accomplish what we will. Congratulations and welcome to the new President General of the UNIA-ACL, the Hon. Mike Duncan, Queens, NY. Brother Akeem Jamal (LA Maafa Commemoration) says that the bones along the ocean floors are an indelible link between Africa and the West, between black people and their shared black culture.

California Institute for Women (CIW) Vigil October 1

Join the families of several young women who recently died in custody for a public vigil at CIW on Saturday, October 1st at 2:30 pm (1:30 pm meet-up nearby). Please RSVP for carpools, directions & prep: ciwvigil@gmail.com.

Demand that the State of California, the Corrections Department (CDCR) & CIW be held responsible for the rampant abuse, neglect & deaths in custody. Demand answers about the premature death of so many young women of color in particular.

Speak out against isolation, abuse & state-sanctioned death! Rally with us in support of the survival & release of people currently incarcerated at CIW.

Bring our loved ones home, ALIVE!

Haiti Rises! Haiti Solidarity Events in Oakland & Greater Bay Area:

Friday, Sept. 30, 4:30 pm – Demonstration, music, drums – 14th and Broadway

Sunday, Oct. 2, 3:00 pm – Inside Haiti’s Election – Eastside Arts, 2277 Internat’l Blvd. Visit www.haitisolidarity.net

Julie Dash Tribute with Screening of “Daughters of the Dust”

Sister Julie Dash, director of “Daughters of the Dust,” is being honored at the Mill Valley Film Festival, October 14, 7 p.m. at the Smith Rafael Film Center, San Rafael. Dash’s wonderful film which highlights the women in Gullah country, St Helena Island, in South Carolinas is poetic and beautiful in its majesty. Enslavement did not rob black people of their consciousness or humanity, quite the contrary as depicted in this iconic glimpse into the daily lives of these women.

Exquisitely cinematic and profoundly imagined, Julie Dash’s Daughter of the Dust is a lyrical story of family migration is unlike any other, establishing her as a strikingly original artist in the pantheon of American cinema. This seminal, award-winning work continues to inspire (notably, Beyoncé’s homage, Lemonade); its newly-restored digital print reveals the gorgeous visual palette. Not to be missed. US 1991, 112 min. Directed by Julie Dash

 

The MVFF Tribute will feature an onstage conversation with Julie Dash, a clip reel of her work, a screening of DAUGHTERS OF DUST, and the presentation of the MVFF Award. Program & Party | $50 general | $45 CFI members. Program Only | $25 general | $20 CFI members

Film

Matatu Film Festival opens Wednesday, October 5 with Damani Baker’s “THE HOUSE ON COCO ROAD Homecoming!” at the Grand Lake Theatre | 7PM. For information visit http://www.matatufestival.org/cocoroad

An intimate portrait of Fannie Haughton, an activist and teacher who moves her children from Oakland, California to participate in the Grenada Revolution – only to find her family in harms way of a U.S. military invasion. With an original score by Meshell Ndegeocello, filmmaker Damani Baker creates an intimate family portrait of nationalism, freedom and the dream of a more livable world. The evening features Fannie Haughton, Fania Davis and Angela Davis.

Freedom Archives presents: Afro-Cuban filmmaker, Gloria Rolando, director of new film: “Dialogue with My Grandmother.” $10, no one turned away.  Saturday, October 1st 7pm, 518 Valencia Street, in San Francisco.

Love Not Blood Campaign Fundraiser Screening of Kevin Pina’s #OO (Occupy Oakland)
Sunday, October 9, 2016 at the Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland at 7pm

This coming October 9 is the eve of the 5th anniversary of the brave decision made by Oakland activists to say enough is enough by taking over the plaza in front of Oakland City Hall in solidarity with the national Occupy Wall Street movement.  On October 10, 2011, they renamed the plaza “Oscar Grant Plaza” and Occupy Oakland was born by calling the world’s attention to the profound link between income equality, racism and police violence.  The movement grew to challenge the status quo by marshaling the traditional progressive forces of the left including Oakland’s historical movements by uniting peace, labor and civil rights activists. Oakland’s unique history including the early struggles of the Black Panther’s against police violence in the black community, was the backdrop to the more contemporaneous movement that sought justice following the murder of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer on January 1, 2009. Many of the same activists from the Oscar Grant movement took up the banner of the Occupy Wall Street movement helping to give rise to Occupy Oakland. As a result, Occupy Oakland , foreshadowed the Black Lives Matter movement through its unflinching linkage of income equality with police brutality in the black community, not only in Oakland, but in cities across the United States. The documentary #OO (Occupy Oakland) represents my continuing efforts to retell this history in video and to preserve it for generations to come.

Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, Oscar Grant’s uncle most recently founded the Love Not Blood Campaign to End Police Terrorism, Mass Incarceration and Community Violence. Pina says he “would like to honor his work and the seminal role of the Oscar Grant movement within Occupy Oakland by using this screening to help raise funds for his organization and its important community work.”

Urban Storytellers Extravaganza!

The African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street in San Francisco, is proud to present The Urban Storytellers Extravaganza! Featuring, among others, comedian Luna Malbroux, storyteller Tureeda Mikell and performance poet Mack Dennis, this show is a celebration of the legacy of spoken word and live performances. This show is a part of the PRAISESINGER PROJECT SERIES, which is our series of Storytelling, Poetry, Jazz and Blues open-mics happening every 6 weeks over the next few months. The show is 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Tickets are $15 at the door for discount (buy tickets here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2606017)

Queen of Katwe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4l3-_yub5A (trailer)

“Queen of Katwe” is another great film. It is the colorful true story of a young girl selling corn on the streets of rural Uganda whose world rapidly changes when she is introduced to the game of chess, and, as a result of the support she receives from her family and community, is instilled with the confidence and determination she needs to pursue her dream of becoming an international chess champion. Directed by Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) from a screenplay by William Wheeler (The Hoax) based on the book by Tim Crothers, Queen of Katwe is produced by Lydia Dean Pilcher (The Darjeeling Limited) and John Carls (Where the Wild Things Are) with Will Weiske and Troy Buder serving as executive producers. The film stars Golden Globe® nominee David Oyelowo (Selma), Oscar® winner and Tony Award® nominee Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) and newcomer Madina Nalwanga.

Theatre

NAKA Dance Theatre and Eastside Arts Alliance present: Live Art in Resistance featuring
Amara Tabor Smith’s “House/Full”, October 21 and 22 at 8 p.m.

This is a multi-site specific, ritual, dance theatre that addresses the displacement and sex trafficking of black women in Oakland. General admission $20-$5-$15.00 at Eastside Arts Cultural Center, 2277 International Blvd., Oakland.

The SF Olympians Festival VII: Harvest of Mysteries

October 5 to 22, 2015, W-Th-F-S, at 8 PM at The EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco

$10.00 at the door, cash only; $12.00 online at Brown Paper Tickets, www.sfolympians.com
Jovelyn Richards has written a play about Auset or Isis. It runs Week Three: The Cradle (10/19-10/22)

Theatre
Colorstruct at Laney College

Donald Lacy’s Colorstruck continues at Laney College theatre, Sat., October 1, 2016, 8 p.m. Marvin X opens with a selected reading from a new play on the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.  Listen to an interview with Lacy on Wanda’s Picks Radio.

October 19, 2016: The Midwife

ANUBIS by David Templeton, directed by Adam Palafox

When Anubis, the Egyptian Lord of the Dead, drunkenly crashes the annual camping trip of four middle-aged guys, will the result be our creaky band of brothers’ best male bonding weekend ever? Or its last?

 

October 20, 2016: The Mother

ISIS by Jovelyn Richards, directed by Jovelyn Richards

You’ve likely heard of the idiom, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. Well, here’s another for you consider: “Only the spirits of the heavens can offer answers to a woman after her husband is brutally murdered in the hellish fires of southern racism!”

 

NEPTHYS by Veronica Tjioe, directed by Nicole Menez

This play is for those who live with a perennial cloud above their head. It is also good for sisters, klutzes, and people who still do laundry at their friend’s house.

 

October 21, 2016: The Father

OSIRIS by Tonya Narvaez, directed by Charles Lewis III

A therapy session reveals suspicious details which make us question each character, their twisted relationships with one another, and the circumstances surrounding Cyrus’s death.

 

SET by Nirmala Nataraj, directed by Adam Odsess-Rubin

Tallulah Beltran is a scientist who has made a career out of studying murderers, rapists, and other societal “anomalies.” But never has she confronted the true nature of evil…that is, until meeting a seductive psychopath who calls himself Set.
The Brothers Size at Theatre Rhinoceros

Theatre Rhinoceros presents, “The Brothers Size” by Tarell Alvin McCraney, directed by Darryl V. Jones, Sept. 24 – Oct. 15, 2016 for a limited engagement at the Eureka Theatre – 215 Jackson St., (at Battery St.) San Francisco. Visit www.TheRhino.org

In the Brothers Size, two brothers, the Louisiana bayou, and West African mythology swirl together in this treasured theatrical event that will leave you breathless. A hot-blooded, music-filled drama from one of the country’s most exciting African-American voices.

The Last Tiger in Haiti at Berkeley Rep

There once lived five kids in modern-day Haiti, all entangled in a dark history of servitude. Huddled in a tent on Mister’s land, they’d spin spellbinding folktales, vying for the title of best storyteller—and dreaming of their freedom. When two of them reunite 15 years later, the boundary between reality and fiction vanishes, revealing secrets of their past more haunting than any of the tales they told. In The Last Tiger in Haiti, Jeff Augustin weaves a remarkable and gripping narrative of survival, betrayal, and the power of a story.

The Last Tiger in Haiti was developed in The Ground Floor: Berkeley Rep’s Center for the Creation and Development of New Work. It runs October 14-November 27 at Berkeley Rep: Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison Street @ Shattuck and Addison, Berkeley.
Art
In celebration of Halloween and Day of the Dead Dance Bridge presents:

The Great Liberation Upon Hearing: A Multi-media Dance Journey based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Friday, October 28, 7 p.m., Saturday, October 29, 7 and 9 p.m. and Sunday, October 30, 6 p.m. at Dance Mission, 3316 24^th Street, San Francisco.

The 17^th Annual Dia de los Muertos at SOMarts, “A Promise Not to Forget” opens Friday, October 7 and continues through Nov. 5. The Gallery is located at 934 Brannan St. (between 8th and 9^th), in San Francisco.

OMCA 22nd Annual Days of the Dead Community Celebration, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, Sunday, October 16, 2016, 12–4:30 pm

Art Exhibits

I Am San Francisco: Black Past and Presence

Congratulations to Jarrel Phillips whose “I Am San Francisco: Black Past and Presence” had a very successful opening reception Sept. 22 at City College of San Francisco, Ocean Campus. The exhibit continues in the Rosenberg Library, 50 Phelan Avenue, 3^rd and 4^th floors through Nov. 3.

The Black Panther Party at 50

It expands blood stream towards http://deeprootsmag.org/2018/01/21/deep-roots-elite-half-hundred-2017-part-1/ cheapest levitra the private parts. Testosterone supplements are there viagra online without to increase your testosterone levels for men with low testosterone. Other men get erection, but they fail to become rigid or hard enough to viagra usa mastercard penetrate into their partners. This excites a lot of fraudsters who want to make buy viagra deeprootsmag.org a winning formula which expands sexual longing, sexual stamina and supports your fearlessness. Happy 50^th Anniversary Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Happy 80^th Birthday Chairman Bobby Seale. Happy Birthday Sister Sheba. Happy Birthday Daddy! Happy Birthday Julie Dash—all born October 22. The BPP Conference workshops and gala dinner take place Oct. 20-23 at the Oakland Museum of California, 1000 Oak Street. Visit http://www.bpp50th.com/

Dance Theatre of San Francisco presents: Unspoken, a film, October 7-13 at Vogue Theater, in San Francisco

ODC Theatre for the month of October
Sins Invalid presents: Birthing, Dying, Becoming Crip Wisdom, Friday-Sunday, October 14-16, 8 p.m.

Nicole Claymoon’s “Embodiment Project,” Friday-Saturday, at 8 p.m., Sunday, at 7 p.m., October 28-30.

EAST BAY CANDIDATE & VOTER EDUCATION FORUM: Organizing for Power hosted by Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition, Black Elected Officials of the East Bay,  Black Women Organized for Political Action Oak/Berk and Niagara Movement Democratic Club
 
Monday, October 3rd  5:30pm until | Geoffrey’s Inner Circle

Members, friends, community join us for an educational evening to inquire the 2016 general election candidates on their perspectives to create and implement legislation, policies and resources to positively impact the black community and other communities of color.  Voter education and registration information will be onsite.
 
INVITED CANDIDATES & REPRESENTATIVES
State Senate | Alameda County | Special Districts | City Council | School Board
| State & Local Measures |
Free to all | Refreshments | Networking | Voter Registration  RSVP to www.organizingforpower.eventbrite.com

All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50 opens at the OMCA, Oct. 8 and continues through Feb. 12, in the Museum’s Great Hall.  

Organized by OMCA Senior Curator of Art René de Guzman and Experience Developer Lisa Silberstein, All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50 explores the Party’s stories of human achievement and struggle to support the needs of the oppressed. The exhibition will delve into aspects of the Party that are not often told, such as its survival programs, the presence of women and rank and file members, its use of media and art, and its founding Ten Point Program that continues to inform and inspire contemporary movements of change today. A schedule of public programs and events has been planned in support of the exhibition and admission is free to Museum ticket-holders unless otherwise noted.

Other exhibitions of note include: The Point is . . . 2.0”: The Artwork in Honor of the Black Panther Party’s 50^th Anniversary with Emory Douglas and the Oakland Maroons Art Collective at Joyce Gordon Gallery, 406 14^th Street, Oakland, Oct. 7-Oct. 29; the Sepia Collective’s Iconic Black Panther opens at American Steel Studios, 1960 Mandela Pkwy., Oakland, Oct. 7-Nov. 6; The African American Museum and Library, Oakland, 659 14th Street, reception and book signing for Suzun Lucia Lamaina’s long awaited Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther in Portraits and Stories, 10/22 to 2/28/ 2017. Saturday, October 22 from 3-6 pm is the opening reception.

Oakland Museum con’t.

SCHEDULE OF PUBLIC PROGRAMS, ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS

Makers & Tasters: Food Activism

Friday, October 7, 6-8 pm

October’s Makers & Tasters series will focus on food activism, inspired by the revolutionary free breakfast programs of the Black Panther Party and by new exhibition All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50, featuring Rubicon Bakery, Sprouts Cooking Club, City Slicker Farms, and Acta Non Verba, organizations making a difference in the community through food.

 

Black Panther Party 50th Anniversary Commemoration & Conference

October 20-23, 2016

Join former members of the Black Panther Party this October for a conference and celebration marketing the 50th anniversary of the Party’s founding. Presented by the Host Committee for the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of the founding of the Black Panther Party, a historically significant organization that has had profound national and local impacts, the gathering takes place at OMCA and Laney College, both located in Oakland, California, home base of the Party. Review the Black Panther Party legacy and celebrate its historical significance in the black community, and consider the question Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. raised so long ago: “Where do we go from here?” Registration, ticket information, and conference details at bpp50th.com.

 

All Power to the People Dialogue Program

October 2016 – February 2017

An innovative new pilot program launching this fall will bring classrooms, businesses, and community organizations in small groups into the exhibition for facilitated dialogues on issues of equity, race, and social justice. The program will be accessible to organizations with fiscal difficulties, with the intention of offering connection, learning, and healing. Dates, details, and fee to be announced.

 

OMCA Family: Poster Making

Every Friday in November as part of Friday Nights @ OMCA, 5-8 pm

Make & Take social justice poster making art activity, inspired by the legacy of the Black Panther Party, and the contemporary issues that are still plaguing our society.

Perspectives at OMCA | Two Generations of Black Struggle

Saturday, January 21, 2017 at 2 pm

The day after the new US President is sworn in, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, Bobby Seale, will share his stories, his reflections, and his strategies of the politics of the revolution, with Oakland’s poet, educator, playwright, and screenwriter, Chinaka Hodge. Tickets are $20 (all ages) and $18 for Members. Gallery admission purchased separately. Advance tickets will be available at museumca.org.

Other Mill Valley Film Festival Picks:

LAMB

Ethiopia 2016, 94 min Director Yared Zeleke

A tender piece of visual poetry from first frame to last, this impressive feature debut was honored as the first Ethiopian film ever named a Cannes Film Festival official selection. Lamb captures the devoted connection between a boy and the beloved pet that is his only anchor to home. In Amharic with English subtitles

Saturday Oct 8 5:15pm Rafael; Tuesday Oct 11 3:00pm Rafael

CALIFORNIA TYPEWRITER

US 2016, 103 min Director Doug Nichol

Weaving three stories—of a repair business, a collector, and an artist—and including interviews with famous typewriter devotees like Tom Hanks, Sam Shepard, and David McCullough, this documentary celebrates the creative virtues and tactile joys of the typewriter. With a click-clack and ping, it’s a love letter to this humble tool.

Monday Oct 10 8:00pm Rafael

DO NOT RESIST

US 2016, 72 min Director Craig Atkinson

Many have been alarmed by the recent spectacle of police in full riot gear and armored vehicles moving through peaceful demonstrations. Sure to spark debate, this disquieting documentary puts the viewer on the streets in the middle of the action and seeks to examine our growing culture of militarization in law enforcement.

Preceded by the DEAN SCREAM US 2016, 10 min Director Bryan Storkel.

Sunday Oct 9 3:45pm Rafael; Wednesday Oct 12 2:15pm Sequoia

FIRE AT SEA

Italy/France 2016, 114 min Director Gianfranco Rosi

Rosi’s beautiful and moving neorealist documentary takes the small Sicilian island of

Lampedusa as its focal point to address the European refugee crisis. Without emotional grandstanding or partisan politics, the film brilliantly juxtaposes the side-by-side relationship of Lampedusa’s residents with the desperate people trying to reach her shores. In Italian and English with English subtitles

Friday Oct 14 8:30pm Rafael; Saturday Oct 15 5:15pm Larkspur

LOVING

US 2016, 123 min Director Jeff Nichols

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

Based on real events, Jeff Nichols’ extraordinary film has a lyrical eloquence that honors the heart of the story of Richard and Mildred Loving (played with understated brilliance by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), the interracial couple whose quiet courage helped change the face of the law of marriage in the US.

Guests: Joel Edgerton, Ruth Negga, Jeff Nichols

Sunday, October 16, 5:00pm Rafael ; Sunday, October 16, 5:00pm & 5:15pm Sequoia

MAYA ANGELOU AND STILL I RISE

US 2016, 114 min Directors Bob Hercules, Rita Coburn Whack

This premier documentary unearths rare archival material to illuminate the life of Dr. Maya Angelou, American poet and performer. James Baldwin, Oprah Winfrey, Alfre Woodard, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Cicely Tyson, Angelou’s son Guy Johnson, and others offer deep insights into this phenomenal woman and the power of her liberated voice.

Tuesday Oct 11 7:30pm Larkspur; Thursday Oct 13 12:30pm Rafael

MOONLIGHT

US 2016, 110 min Director Barry Jenkins

DIRECTORS’ NIGHT IN MILL VALLEY

Barry Jenkins’ (Medicine for Melancholy) gritty yet poignant inner city drama presents a young life in three acts. Coming of age in Reagan-era Miami amidst the crack epidemic, young Chiron endures relentless bullying at school and stinging neglect at home while struggling to understand his own sexuality and the myth and meaning of masculinity.

Monday Oct 10 7:45pm Sequoia; Thursday Oct 13 11:30am Rafael

 

In “Southside with You,” (2016), which opens nationally August 26, 2016, Richard Tanne makes his feature film directorial debut.  “Southside” is the story of youthful love, first love for Michelle Robinson (25), a sheltered Chi-town daughter who is working hard—pressing against glass ceilings from a philosophical basement at a prestigious law firm, as she supervises the charming, cute intern, 27 year old, Barack Obama.

The film opens with both protagonists getting ready for their “date,” Barack is seated in his easy chair talking to his grandmother, while Michelle is choosing jewelry, combing her hair, putting lotion on her feet and ankles, then tucking an orange silk blouse into the waist of a cream pencil skirt before slipping on high heel pumps, and walking into the front room of the house to greet her parents who both quiz her about her date. Michelle doesn’t date interns, or so she tells her parents—Marion and Fraser C. Robinson (actors Vanessa Bell Calloway and Phillip Edward Van Lear) who smile as they watch their daughter dress for the “non-date.” She tells them his name which in itself is a conversation starter. While across town, we hear Barack’s grandmother quizzing him on Michelle, and liking what she hears tells Barack to hurry so he won’t be late.

He is, late, that is, something Michelle notices.

The day starts early and Barack has a lot planned; however, Michelle tells him immediately that she has worked too hard to give the lead attorneys at Sidley and Austin, reason to question her values or judgement. Barack agrees to her terms, happy that she doesn’t ask him to take her home.  Actress Tika Sumpter’s Michelle is intellectually sharp and witty as she and a charming chain smoking Barack (actor Parker Sawyers) dance around each other as Michelle’s attraction in an already interested Barack becomes undeniable and she rethinks her rules and compromises as the day progresses.

Michelle visibly relaxes, opens up and begins to let herself enjoy Barack’s company.  Sawyers’s character wants Michelle Robinson to see him. Obviously the actual First Lady likes the introductory package and wrapper. “Southside with You” is a great primer for first dates. President Barack Obama’s initial preparations for this fictionalized version of the actual first date lead the couple (two years later) to matrimony, two daughters, the Senate and two terms in the Whitehouse.

Sawyers’s Barack didn’t know what to expect and at day’s end after he drops off Michelle, and both sit and reflect we see smiles on both their faces –  What the brash Barack almost stumbles into amazes him, as much as it will amaze audiences who did not know as much as we learn on the screen about the eventual First Lady. He literally has no clue, no inclination into the depth hidden beneath Michelle’s professional demeanor. Sumpter’s reading of Barack, as Michelle, is in contrast, on target, whenever she calls him out. She shows up fully armed, pistols strapped on both hips. Though she doesn’t fire blanks, Michelle is a merciful markswoman.

Posed and in control, Tika Sumpter’s Michelle LaVaughn Robinson has definite ideas about what she wants and how she plans to play her hand. It takes a while for Barack to win her confidence, but he does with little things like remembering she likes chocolate ice cream, knowing when to be silent and to listen to what is unspoken and what is voiced.

Funny and spontaneous, Sawyers’s Barack upsets Michelle’s wagon. As she runs to gather the scattering apples each one rolling a bit faster the moment she gets close, Michelle wonders aloud if her intellectual investment in the task is worth the trouble. Let them all rot! Why not try another orchard where the farmers allow her input into the season before harvest?

Both characters grow and change in these capable actors’ hands. “Southside with You” is definitely an ensemble piece, yet as much as we love no nonsense Michelle, it is Parker Sawyers’s charming Barack who carries the show—from the actor’s uncannily familiar Obama mannerisms and diction to his striking visage, his Barack is well . . . our Executive in Chief (smile)—the actor’s aesthetic preparation and training evident in this role. Additionally, his background as a lobbyist gives him a natural inclination and knack for the Barack character and role as well.

Sawyers’s Barack keeps the audience riveted to the screen as his unsolicited observations produce unfavorable results in his date whom he is trying to impress (smile).  Barack then retreats and regroups, Sawyers’s character persisting as he changes minutely and profoundly as a result of his relationship with Tika Sumpter’s Michelle.  He wants the girl. Will he get her? We all know the answer to this. Nonetheless, it’s fun watching Barack sweat.

Barack apologizes to Michelle publically and even admits to a propensity to prejudge another when he is invited to address his friends at the community meeting he and Michelle attend.  Young Barack’s speech is so politically astute—we have a glimpse at the future. One has to marvel at Richard Tanne’s writing and direction here. It is one of multiple freeze frame moments in the film; another is when Michelle shares a personal, not-to-be-repeated-story with Barack.

When Michelle and Barack walk through an alley memorialized with names of black boys killed, once again revelatory— the despair is palatable before we arrive at the church with a leaky roof, community members filling the pews. They assemble to discuss the city council’s refusal to fund a much needed building for children to safely play. Here again, remarkable moments in this amazing film.

Those lists and lists of names lie silently all but forgotten; however, the fallen live in the hearts and minds of those assembled. Barack tells his friends who welcome him back from Harvard, that he has not forgotten them. This community reflects important formative relationships Barack established pre-Harvard Law School.  Similarly, this date with Michelle is another such moment in a youthful life where nothing is taken for granted.

In “Southside with You,” two young people with so much integrity get to know one another. Sumpter’s Michelle listens then calls Barack out on his anger with his Kenyan father; she suggests he forgive him, as she tells him another story about a father-son relationship which starts one way then changes—not because it was easy, rather because it was necessary.  In this story about Michelle’s paternal grandfather and his son, her father, we learn why education is so important to the Robinson family.

At a preview screening at Jack London Cinema, the lead actors share the details of the road from idea to film, shot in 17 days in Chicago’s Southside neighborhood not far from the First Lady’s childhood home. Other scenes are filmed on the West Side, downtown, and on the Amstutz Expressway in Waukegan– Southside’s cinematic re-creation impressive considering architectural changes over the 26 years since Michelle and Barack shared their first kiss. With an estimated budget of $1,500,000, this film had major support from the beginning. John Legend is one of the executive producers with Tika Sumpter, Richard Tanne, and Robert Teitel.

Barack is charming and persistent. He wants to get to know his supervising attorney. She does not date interns. As a black woman in a predominately white firm, she feels she would be respected even less, so she tells him no.  But one sunny day, he convinces her to join him at a community meeting and she says yes.
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That yes—as Oakland poet, Reginald Lockett writes and syndicated writer, Shonda Rhimes’s echoes in her “Year of Yes,” is the start of everything. We can see that despite her qualms about dating someone from the office, specifically an intern she supervises, Michelle is smitten as is Barack who opens, then closes the Toni Morrison novel he was about to read. The film ends with the two of them smiling as they reflect on their day together. Barack had planned the day, however, even he could have not anticipated the imperceptible chemical reactions as he sat across from Michelle discussing music choices over a beer, swapping favorite TV show lore at an African Art show or walking through the City of Bones in route to a community meeting at Altgeld Gardens Homes, one of the oldest housing projects in Chicago (1944-45) and one of the first built in the United States.

Michelle and Barack’s day together gives audiences a sense of this city of stark oppositions— very poor and more affluent residents, who don’t have to see each other as long as everything is in its place.  This theme is reinforced by Ernie Barnes’s art at the gallery and Spike Lee’s film, “Do the Right Thing.”  There was not much difference between the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and Chicago’s Southside.

Barnes’s work takes black life as its theme—his elongated figures animated and alive on the canvas.  The late Samuel Fredericks, owner, Samuel’s Gallery on Oak Street in Oakland, hosted a retrospective of Barnes’s work.  The artist was in attendance signing copies of his autobiography, “From Pads to Palettes” (1995).  Barnes spoke about his desire to be a fine artist, and the difficulty in doing so when all the fine artists in museums were white.  When he stated to his teacher that he would exhibit at a museum the class was visiting one day, she laughed and said black people don’t paint.

Although he had the soul of an artist and never stopping drawing and painting, Barnes attended college on a football scholarship. He became a professional athlete (1959-1965) until an injury forced his retirement and his work as official artist for the NFL in 1965 began. When Barack and Michelle stop in front of a painting where men are playing pool, Barack recites Chicago Poet Laureate, Gwendolyn Brooks’s classic work: “We Real Cool: The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel.”

Sawyers’s Barack shares stories of Barnes, the celebrated artist and his work. As he and Michelle walk through the gallery—he mentions JJ from the sitcom “Good Times” and JJ’s metamorphosis when he discovers he can paint.  Actor, Jimmy Walker’s “James JJ Evans” could have stepped from the artist’s canvas, slender and of wiry build, enthusiastic and in perpetual motion. From opening credits which feature Barnes’s “The Sugar Shack” (1970s) to most of the artwork in the series JJ paints, the work also shares Barnes signature. Barnes’ canvas which highlights the vibrancy and rich cultural tapestry that is black people in all their glory, something Michelle and Barack appreciate—something “Southside with You” celebrates. Barnes’s exhibition, “The Beauty of the Ghetto,” an exhibition of 35 paintings that toured major American cities from 1972-1979 was his [illustrated] response to the 1960s ‘Black is beautiful’ cultural movement and James Brown’s 1968 ‘Say it loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud.’”[1]

Of this exhibition, Barnes said, “I am providing a pictorial background for an understanding into the aesthetics of black America. It is not a plea to people to continue to live there (in the ghetto) but for those who feel trapped, it is…a challenge of how beautiful life can be.”[2]

What the director does with Barnes’s art, the African drummers in the park, the little girl dancing and Michelle joining her . . . opens the story to the community which supports the development of a Michelle and adopted son, Barack. The fenced lawns, children playing in the yards in one black community, the absence of children’s voices in others—the picturesque and the horrific realities as we watch Radio Rahim (Bill Nunn) choked to death by police in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989), affirms the possibility of love even when life isn’t perfect.

This first date between Michelle and Barack is at a time when America is at crossroads – Spike Lee’s film at its center: “Do the Right Thing.” However, America has not done the right thing. This structural inequity is echoed at the community meeting the couple attend, it is echoed now at the end of President Obama’s second term. To place this film at the center of the discussion is politically strategic and savvy.

1989 is a volatile year[3]:
U.S. planes shoot down two Libyan fighters over international waters in Mediterranean (Jan. 4). Emperor Hirohito of Japan dead at 87 (Jan. 7). George Herbert Walker Bush inaugurated as 41st U.S. president (Jan. 20). Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declares author Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses offensive and sentences him to death (Feb. 14). Ruptured tanker Exxon Valdez sends 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound (March 24). Tens of thousands of Chinese students take over Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in rally for democracy (April 19 et seq.). U.S. jury convicts Oliver North in Iran-Contra affair (May 4). More than one million in Beijing demonstrate for democracy; chaos spreads across nation (mid-May et seq.). Mikhail S. Gorbachev named Soviet president (May 25). Thousands killed in Tiananmen Square as Chinese leaders take hard line toward demonstrators (June 4 et seq.). . . .

Yet, despite all this and what is to come circa 1989, history is working its magic in “Southside with You.”

Within a microcosm that is Chicago’s black community, Michelle Robinson’s family is not an anomaly, but also not typical.  Inside the humble bungalow where she and her brother shared the living room, a curtain dividing the room into two sections, education was stressed, and civic responsibility modeled. Her dad, Frazer C. Robinson, (actor Phillip Edward Van Lear) whom we see in the film and learn about from Michelle, worked 27 years as a City pump operator never missing a day, even when he was diagnosed with MS. The short scene at home, is enough to establish for the audience Michelle’s love for her parents and their support. Both Michelle and her older brother Craig excelled academically—Michelle, followed in her brother’s footsteps and graduated from Princeton, cum laude (1985) with a degree in sociology; she then earned a law degree at Harvard Law School (1988). Both she and her brother skipped second grade and learned to read at four. Michelle attended Whitney Young High School, the first magnet school for gifted and talented children. She graduated in 1981 as class salutatorian.

“Southside with You” is a great story, made all the better because it actually happened. Would that all our days could be as sweet. Don’t miss the film, August 26, when it opens nationwide.

 

[1] http://www.erniebarnes.com/biography.html

[2] Ibid

[3] http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005271.html