ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

racism

The Walk – Desgregating the Deep North

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School desegregation reached Boston in 1974. It turned into violent confrontations, especially in South Boston. It was a time of racial animus and tension. It was disruptive to both White and Black families. The Walk, from director Daniel Adams, is a story of two families who are brought together by those events.

Bill Coughlin (Justin Chatwin) is a Boston police officer who lives in Southie. He is kindhearted, as we see when he stops a thief who needed food for a baby. His daughter Kate (Katie Douglas) is looking forward to her senior year at Southie High School. When the news comes down that busing will begin in the fall, the summer is spent waiting for news of who will be sent to what school. Bill is teamed with a black officer to escort black students into the school, because he’s local and that might carry some weight with his neighbors. Wendy Robbins (Lovie Simone) is looking forward to her senior year at the Roxbury High in her Black neighborhood. Her father (Terrence Howard) works as an EMT.

When the letter from the schools arrive, Kate is delighted that she will be going to Southie (although her best friend will be bussed to Roxbury). Wendy learns that she will be sent to Southie. She would prefer to stay at her old school, but is determined not to show her fear when the time comes to go to the school.

Most of the film is set in the summer between school years. Bill is faced with many people (including colleagues in the police) who are vehemently opposed to bussing. His Southie neighbors want to keep things as they have always been. That is especially true of the local hoods, led by McLaughlin (Malcom McDowell). As part of the backstory, Bill helped put away one of McLaughlin’s crew for a killing. That person has just gotten out of prison. As the summer progresses, Kate becomes connected to the son of the man Bill arrested (something Bill opposes). One night they stone a car with Black passengers driving through the neighborhood. The passengers are Wendy and her father.

When the first day of school arrives, Bill is at Southie to do his job as the bus arrives. Wendy’s father is there as well with the ambulance in anticipation of violence. The crowd is angry and vicious. But Bill will do what he must to protect the children, even if his neighbors (and perhaps his daughter) are opposed.

Too much of the film is built around the animosity between the local hoods and Bill. While there is racism involved in all this, the film fails to really delve into the way racism manifests in people who may well see themselves as good. Instead, when the most violent act occurs, it is only using the racial situation as a way of settling an old grudge. It is important that we see that racism is not something that is from the past or is pushed by people with some other agenda. It comes from within each of us. The film tries to show the evils of racism, and the difficulty finding answers to that problem. But it never quite makes us look at ourselves.

The Walk is in theaters.

Photos courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.

Memory House – The Weight of Oppression

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In Memory House, Brazilian filmmaker João Paulo Miranda Maria shows us the way a history of colonialism (even when it’s not officially colonial) continues to be a spiritual burden that many cannot escape.

Cristovam is a indigenous black man from Northern Brazil who has moved to an Austrian enclave in the South because the dairy company he worked at for 20 years long ago closed the dairy he worked at in the north and moved the operations to the south. In the opening scene, Cristovam is being interviewed by the company head, but through an interpreter. The boss hasn’t even bothered to learn Portuguese. When Cristovam is told his wages will be cut, the boss tells the interpreter “As on old and black man, where would he get a better option?”

The boss operates under the assumption that the Europeans came to bring innovation. He assumes that is for the better. The company is fully behind an independence movement to secede from Brazil. They clearly feel superior to the Brazilian people.

As one of the very few native Brazilians (and the darkest skinned one), Cristovam is something of an outlier. He doesn’t speak German like most of the people in his community. He experiences blatant racism. He is preyed upon by local youths.

He discovers an abandoned house that has many old things that rekindle his memories and feelings of past times. As he finds more and more items, he is in touch with ancient folklore and begins to find a sense of being that is not defined by the European community. There is a hint of magical realism as Cristovam takes on these aspects of the past.

Part of the discoveries that Cristovam makes happen after some locals have painted a racist comment on the wall in the house. He begins chipping the plaster away and there finds an earlier wall with a picture on it that is one of his triggers. We see there is a layer under that one as well. It is as though the layers of historical oppression must be removed bit by bit in order for Cristovam to find his genuine self.

The film provides commentary on the way oppressed minorities have had their dignity chipped away through years of cultural imperialism. Cristovam is left with little of the meanings and values of the world of his birth. He is a stranger in a strange land even in his native country. And in the end, even his life may be just another thing stolen by the company and the community around it.

Memory House is in select theaters and available of virtual cinema.

Photos courtesy of Film Movement.

Chauvin Verdict Reaction; Race & Policing

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Derek Chauvin is found guilty of murdering George Floyd. In this episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we talk about the trial, the verdict and the related issues: race, racism and justice in America; the influence of politics and media; policing and how race is related; what this event could mean for the future.

Most importantly, we try to approach the topic from a Christian perspective, asking how we might respond to and participate in this moment of change.

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Ravi Zacharias Revisited; WandaVision; The Bachelor

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your sunday drive christian podcast

The fallout continues after Ravi Zacharias’ sexual abuse is confirmed. In a new episode of the Your Sunday Drive podcast, we talk about the related issues, trying to come up with some hopeful takeaways for how we can heal and do better in the future.

We also take a few minutes to look at our current pop culture favorites, including WandaVision and The Bachelor, noting not to neglect pop culture’s role as a primary way people interact with philosophical and social issues.

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive

Reporting from Slamdance – a few final films

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A few more films as I wind down my coverage of Slamdance Film Festival. It has been a wonderful experience, as most film festivals are.

In Jim Bernfield’s documentary feature Me to Play, Dan Moran and Chris Jones, two actors with Parkinson’s Disease, set out to perform Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Jones describes the project at one point as “two actors with diminishing physical abilities playing two characters with diminishing physical abilities trying to get through the last stages of their lives.” The film is built around the five weeks of rehearsal leading up to the single performance. Along the way the two actors share the ways the affliction has changed their lives. For actors, their bodies and voices are essential not only to their profession, but to their sense of who they are. This film serves well as a look into the kinds of struggles people face with debilitating diseases, and the bits of hope they can find along the way.

Race and rage are the focus of The Sleeping Negro, directed by Skinner Myers. In a frequently surreal film, a young black man is trying to get by in the world, but the rage he carries over the racist system leads him to push away the people closest to him. He argues about racism with both a black friend and his white fiancée, both of whom don’t think racism is as bad as he claims. In many ways, the rage is directed at himself. He is conflicted to be trying to find success in a world that is racially unjust and wanting nothing to do with it. The film serves as an introduction to some of the ways the African-American experience can wear on the emotional and psychological well-being of people.

After America, directed by Jake Yuzna, grew out of a project involving criminal justice de-escalation workers in Minneapolis. They used theater workshop techniques to portray their struggles with their real-life pressures. There are a series of different storylines, some of which converge briefly. The film seems to be going off in several directions at once, making it a bit chaotic. Some of the stories focus on relationships, connections, loneliness, brokenness, feelings of uselessness. Some bits have a surreal feel to them, especially when much of the film takes place in an empty shopping mall. There are other visual shots that show the emptiness that the characters feel they are living in.

Native Son – 1951 Film Still Speaks

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“Fear has haunted Thomas to the very end.”

Richard Wright’s 1940 novel Native Son is one of the standards of African-American literature. It has found its way to the screen a few times. The first such film, directed by Belgian director Pierre Chenal, was made in Argentina in 1951. The international flair is worth noting, because it is a film that probably couldn’t have been made at that time in the US (in part because Wright was blacklisted). When the film was released in the US it faced severe censorship. Many thought the unexpurgated film was lost for years, but in the 1990s a complete copy of the film was found in Argentina and was given to the Library of Congress for restoration. That restored version (actually restored from two copies, one 35 mm the other 16 mm) is now being released anew.

It is the story of Bigger Thomas (played here by Richard Wright himself), a young black man in Chicago’s South Side, (described in the opening voice over as “a prison without bars”). We’re told he longs to be an adventurer and explorer, but “when you’re black it’s better to keep your dreams locked in your heart.”

Bigger is on the edge of criminality, but is given a job as chauffeur for the rich white Daulton family. The parents are somewhat liberal in terms of race, Mr. Daulton tells Bigger that has wife “has a deep interest in colored people”. Daughter Mary Daulton is very progressive. When Bigger drives her to an evening out (supposedly to the library), she has him pick up her boyfriend Jan (a labor organizer) and they all go to a South Side club where Bigger’s girlfriend Bessie happens to be singing.

Mary and Jan believe in complete equality. Jan has various pamphlets on unions and racial equality. Jan tells Bigger, “One of these days we’re going to smash this Jim Crow system, and when we smash it, it’s going to stay smashed.” They expect Bigger to be their friend rather than just a chauffeur. It is very uncomfortable for Bigger to be in such a situation.

After a long night of drinking, Mary needs help getting to her room. While Bigger is trying to get her into bed, events lead to him accidentally killing her. He knows that a black man killing a white woman will never be understood, so he tries to cover it up. As the cover up escalates, and then unravels, Bigger and Bessie are on the run from police. Bigger is eventually captured and put on trial.

The film is very much in the film noir tradition. Bigger is not a moral paragon or innocent man. He has had past issues with the law. At the beginning of the story he’s planning a crime that doesn’t happen. Yet he gets caught up in circumstances mostly of his own making. However, all of this is rooted in the fear ingrained in Bigger because he is black. He knows that justice can sometimes be very swift for black men. His father was lynched twelve years earlier. What might be for some people a terrible accident, Bigger knows could be deadly for him. His every action is based on growing fear of how the world will see this and react to it.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is a mid-twentieth century view of racism. (That is one of the causes of the censorship it faced.) While there are some very overt racist scenes, such as a crowd outside the courthouse complaining over the cost of a trial when they could just lynch him, often there are more nuanced views of racism. For example, when Bigger is driving Mary and Jan, Mary wants Bigger to sing something, suggesting “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”. For all her supposed liberalism, she has a pre-conceived idea of a black person that is very much a stereotype.

There are some interesting religious angles to the story as well. Bigger’s mother is very religious. Right after Bigger goes to work for the Daultons, he is brooding at home, and he and his mother have a brief dialog:

Mother: What’s you thinking about?

Bigger: About how we live and how they live.

Mother: Leave them things to God, son. In his Kingdom all men are equal.

Bigger: Yeah, I know, but we don’t live there.

After Bigger’s arrest, his mother takes his siblings to church and we hear her prayer seeking mercy. But Bigger never turns to God, in part because he believes he is deserving of what has befallen him.

Here is a nearly seventy year old film based on an eighty year old novel that continues to seem contemporary. That serves as a reminder of just how little progress our society has made in racial relations. We might want to join in Bigger’s mother’s prayer for mercy—for young men who must live such lives and for ourselves as we see our failure to bring about change.

Native Son is available on Virtual Cinema through Kino Marquee and local arthouses and includes in introduction by film historians Eddie Muller (Film Noir Foundation) and Najima Stewart (co-curator of Kino Lorber’s Pioneers of African American Cinema).

Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber

Myth of a Colorblind France – Black Expats

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Paris has been a haven for American expatriot artists of all sorts, but especially for African-Americans. In Myth of a Colorblind France, from Alan Govenar, we get to see that history in the 20th century and how it continues today. However, just because African-Americans found freedom there, doesn’t mean that there is no racism in France.

Most of the film is a celebration of African-American artists, writers, and musicians who migrated to Paris starting early in the 20th century. With the advent of World War I, when black soldiers were readily accepted by the French (who didn’t know about American segregation), many African-Americans felt free for the first time. In the post-war era, African-Americans began to return to France to enjoy the ability express their arts freely. This continued in the post-World War II era as well. Among those we learn about are dancer Josephine Baker, jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet, painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, writers Countee Cullen, Chester Himes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. The film also allows us to hear some of the stories of current African-American expats who continue to find their home in Paris.

There are two key elements that made African-Americans feel welcome in France. The first was the absence of the racism that was so engrained in American society. When American blacks came to France, the segregation and discrimination they knew at home was not part of French culture. The second element is that in France these people were seen as artists rather than entertainers. That is a key difference. There was no sense of minstrel show when at a jazz club or seeing Josephine Baker. These were people who were making art—something that was valued in the French culture.

Note that I’m talking here about the African-American experience in France. It is noted in a few parts of the film that this is not the same experience that Africans and French people of African descent deal with. One of the current African-American expats recalls being in a neighborhood where many Africans live, and being harshly stopped by police and asked for papers. He says when they heard his American accent and saw he had US identification, they acted very politely. He doesn’t believe that would have been the case otherwise.

Early on it is pointed out that “racism in France is much more complicated” It is tied to the period of colonialism when France controlled many places in North and West Africa, and the Caribbean. People from these former colonies have often migrated to France as well. Even those born in France with such heritage, often times are treated much differently that the African-Americans.

The film really spends very little time on this issue, even though it seems to be implied by the film’s title. While the film is instructive for us to see the great talent among African-Americans that was nurtured in France, it fails to give more than some passing examples of how racism works in France. There is no systematic look at how racism and anti-immigrant (especially anti-Moslem) sentiment has taken root in France. That might serve as a starting point for discussion in French culture about the realities of racism. It might also serve as an opening for Americans to better understand some of the subtle ways racism works here as well.

Myth of a Colorblind France is available through Virtual Cinema at local arthouses.

TIFF20: One Night in Miami

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One Night in Miami' Review: Regina King's Vibrant Directorial Debut | IndieWire

Regina King flexes her incredible directorial skills for the first time in a feature film by bringing the stage play, One Night in Miami by Kemp Powers, to the big screen (or little screen, as it were).

One Night in Miami is a fictional take on a meeting between real life friends, Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) as they celebrate Clay’s title victory in 1964.

When these four men are in a room alone together it sparks deep and passionate conversations about faith, civil rights, racism, and freedom.  As this was a stage play, we are blessed with numerous impressive monologues from each character.  This is an extremely emotionally driven piece and it certainly compares their world in 1964 to ours in 2020.

One Night in Miami is a very impressive film that is not only entertaining but extremely relevant and important.  Each performance was incredible and the cast had great chemistry on screen.  (In fact, from the footage I have seen of these men in real life, the acting was spot on.)  You believed their friendship but you also believed their disagreements.  And perhaps we can take a note from these men in the way that they support each other, yet don’t hesitate to call it out when there’s an issue and a potential for growth.

One Night in Miami is currently streaming at the Bell TIFF Cinema as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

Black Boys – The Two-edged Sword

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“The bottom line for why things haven’t changed is there is no love for black boys.”

Sonia Lowman’s documentary Black Boys opens with former NFLer Greg Scruggs reading The Little Engine that Could to his toddler son. It transitions to a middle school age boy taking Richard Wrights Black Boy from a shelf and reading it. That dichotomy of idealism and reality is the driving force of the film. Or as activist/rapper Malcolm Little puts it, “You’re talking a double-edged sword to be a black boy in America, because you have to tell yourself that you are magnificent and that you are free and beautiful, while simultaneously acknowledging that the world is not built for you. It’s not built for your success. It’s not built for you to survive.”

The film is designed in four sections entitled Body, Mind, Voice, and Heart. In each of those we get a touch of what it means for young black men as they grow into the world. Sports dominates the Body section. Sports may seem like a way out of the difficulties blacks face, but is it? Or is it just another exploitation of black bodies? Education becomes the main topic of the Mind section. Again, this is an area of great hope, but we also know that as early as kindergarten, black children are often getting less attention and are sold lower expectations. The Voice and Heart sections really focus more on the hopeful side of the film’s core contrast to let us hear what the experience has done to the people interviewed and how the future has an opportunity for change, but that is by no means a certainty.

I consider myself woke (at least for an old white guy), so there isn’t much in this film that is new to me. But it is a very powerful presentation of not just facts and figures, but of the emotional reality of the lives of the people we visit. This is in no small part because of the excellent work Lowman has done in interviewing her subjects to evoke their reflections. Whether the subjects are athletes, educators, activists, or young people looking at their future, the insights provided are always challenging without being overly judgmental. As a white person watching the film I didn’t feel as though I was being called on to feel guilty, but to be engaged with the issues of social justice that are brought forth.

One piece of archival footage that spoke to me, personally, was a press conference held by Philadelphia Eagle player Malcolm Jenkins in which he never spoke, only held up prepared signs. Several of the signs repeated the sentence, “You aren’t listening”. To me that is a reminder that the first (but not the last) thing I need to do when faced with the cries for social justice, is to listen. I may have heard these things before. I still need to listen again.

Black Boys is an invitation for all of us to listen. Some of us need to hear the facts and figures we may have missed. Some of us may need to hear the pain some people have lived through. Some of us may need to hear of the inequalities we never knew about. Some of us may need to hear the visions of hope that continue to be dreamed—and realized. Listen.

Black Boys is available on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service.

BLM Unpacked; RTJ4, Last of Us 2, Christians & R-Rated Media

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your sunday drive podcast

Picking up from our last episode, we revisit Black Lives Matter, unpacking it as a value statement vs. a political statement, how the situation has developed over the past few weeks with defund the police movements and the death of Rayshard Brooks, and the potential dangers of “woke anti-racism” as a secular religion (a la John McWhorter).

Also: cancel culture, blackface, statues, and finding a way to navigate the symbolic nexus of history, freedom, motivation, love, etc. that this moment represents.

We also look at two popular pieces of current media (that Matt digs) – the album RTJ4 from rap group Run the Jewels and the game The Last of Us Part 2 – and ask questions around Christians and R-rated media: should we engage? How? Why? Dangers? Benefits? (you get it 🙂 )

Come along for Your Sunday Drive – quick conversation about current events, politics, pop culture and more, from the perspective of a couple of guys trying to follow Jesus.

Hosts: Matt Hill and Nate Polzin. Presented by the Church in Drive of Saginaw, MI, as often as possible. Please visit churchindrive.com and facebook.com/thechurchindrive