This is pretext pertaining to a long documentary project about blackness and film. Most films are not explained in content, and some links are missing. It’s a massive work in progress.

The past couple of months have been interesting to say the least. I finally realized that to be I must do. My aunt called me about a month ago to tell me to keep writing. Keep thinking, keep going, because I will Do It. Whatever It is. It was nice to hear, and very kind of her, and I was delighted that she thought of me! But I didn’t really take it to heart until one night in October.

I’ve been going through a lot of existential angst. When I express this, people tend to think that I’m being comical or it’s an exaggeration. It’s not and I’m not. It’s not as fleeting, and it can be scary. It’s not something I can automatically move on from for a variety of reasons. First, a lot of it starts with a feeling of displacement, being lost, that sensitivity, and growing pains. The other part of it is, even with a full-feeling life, the angst can’t be solved because it’s the literal question of life. It can be abated, but it' doesn’t go away.

There’s a lot of theories about this emotional change and a question; some spiritual, some ego death, all about the transition in life. I’ve tried astrology, tried meyers-briggs, numerology. They’re a lot of fucking fun, honestly, and give a person insight to themselves super quickly (perhaps shallowly.) In the stars, Jungian theory, the numbers people have studied there’s a repeating that I noticed. It’s annoying but a pattern that has followed me since I learned how to worry. Often in explaining my work and how I feel, I mention fear. Fear of failure, fear of the future, fear of the fear of failing, fear of sleep, fear of—you feel me?

Fear about life ending without knowing what the meaning of life is. Or dying (this one is particularly hard for me to release because I want answers now and it is humanly impossible.)

Fear of never being able to move myself or others to tears with my creative expression.

Although I am unique, I am restrained, contained by questions! I’ve been working all my life to understand the unanswerable. Ironically, I now know that to understand, or develop an understanding, I gotta let this shit go. Philosophy has helped, or even self-help words about the essence of life, but pretending like I’m not boxed in doesn’t mean I’m not.

Anyway, I’ve been on a journey of accepting that’s a difficulty for me. I can be inquisitive but not so inquisitive that I can stare at the ceiling for an hour just pondering. Camus stated that, in essence, figuring out life is just living. If we spend it up in the clouds, how are we experiencing it? So, I was projecting what I could do in my brain, whilst questioning our existence, but not doing it.

I’m pretty private about a lot of things, as self-defense and because what I believe I have to offer doesn’t really have to do with myself but my sense of the world—there are some things I don’t feel are personal. You can see that I’m tall, black, have a certain face, those are all a part of me. It’s a fact. One of those facts is that ADHD simply doesn’t go away, anxieties won’t disappear, and with so much questioning about life, it’s given me an immense love of the planet and humanity. What keeps me so bouncy, thoughtful, anxious is my love of exploration and being with others.

Although I’ve become more of an active participant in my life, I am not afraid to admit that I’m scared. Acknowledging the unease is okay now, though, because all the fear of my work not being able to move others the way art has moved me doesn’t need to be a worry. It won’t make me any better, just incredibly fearful. I share because I can, I want to, and I believe there’s some shit to say.

As an aside: it takes me a very long time to catch up with a lot of film news and films. I don’t know all the film world has ever held. I know what I know and what I think. I go slowly because this is how I live my life; discovery is always at my pace. I hate feeling rushed and out of some imaginary loop. Thank you!

That out of the way, I’ve been (always) thinking about identity. The more I acknowledge ownership of my reality and future, the more I can see that, as we are the center of our own universe, there’s no other lens but ours to look at ourselves in. We recognize pain and exclusion not as an immovable object, but a challenge; it would be naive to say it’s not a hindrance but instead of internalizing we fight to externalize.

Couple months ago I took a twitter break. I don’t pay attention to many celebrities anyway, the only Marvel movies I have enjoyed in the past three years are two obvious players, Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther. The reasons why are another story but I like them, they’re fun, I think they’re good, get over it. It’s a fucking film not rocket science, ok? Recently, I had the opportunity to see Parasite with my brother and aunt (the same one that told me to keep Doing) and in that same week, Queen and Slim had been released. This has a point.

When I got an engagement coordination position, I made the grave mistake of going Fully Back Online (I’m half-joking.) Apparently a frenzied opinion war is-this-or-is-this-not art had broken out when Scorsese was asked about Marvel movies. On a surface level, it seems pretty harmless, he’s allowed to be pretentious. Unfortunately, the internet being what it is, a long conversation was brought about. Scorsese ended up with an write an op-ed in the New York Times so he could elaborate on a short answer to a short question. Now, before I carry on, if anyone is reading this or if it’s just me trying to structure my thoughts, we have to look at some “things”: Capitalism, racism, misogyny, heterosexism, cissexism, homophobia, anti blackness, misogynoir, imperialism. You name it, we got it.

For the most part, I’m not arguing whether his comments were egregious, or rude, or particularly odious. Honestly, he’s not wrong in his critique of these films and money, creativity, and industry. I tried to see what he meant not so much from personal experience but from a talented veteran filmmaker’s perspective—one who lived in this creative “golden age” many of us have no way (and would have had even less right) to experience— was, well, the source and his perception. I understand his importance as a director and patronizing reminders that He Is Scorsese do nothing for me except put things in context. He has The Film Foundation, a foundation that promotes restoration and education of films. He loves African film. He uses the internet to distribute these films. That takes time, thoughtfulness, and money.

The Story of Movies (storyofmovies.org), TFF’s innovative educational initiative, is the result of a partnership of filmmakers and educators to create a curriculum to help students better understand the language of film.

By introducing young people to classic cinema, the program encourages an appreciation of film as an artistic, cultural and historical document, leading to an awareness of the importance of artist’s rights and the need to protect our motion picture heritage.

Each curriculum unit is distributed completely free of charge. To date, the program has been used by over 100,000 educators at more than 40,000 schools across the country. 

This is amazing, I feel warm reading it, and I believe this is exactly what artists in his position should do. And, were one to get funding and success the way others have, I believe they should do this. Film is about others, about reaching through this strange language, it holds living proof of life. I can’t tell anyone “how much is enough.” I don’t know what change on the part of the privileged really looks like on larger scale models. In 2014, HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN, the Yams Art Collective, boycott the Whitney biennial. Then, in a major fumble, the Whitney chose a painting of Emmett Till to be included in the 2017’s biennial. This is the letter issued, which is a fascinating, heartbreaking, and empowering read. It seems, at the least, ill-advised to display an abstract painting of emmett till’s open casket by a white artist; even on a shallow level, after a controversy 3 years prior and a conversation that never ends because…well.

This year I actually experienced the biennial during my first visit to the Whitney with my best friend. A lot of the art was beautiful and there was a huge range of talent. To me, not only the talent was there but acknowledgement that art is never apolitical. After, when we were sitting on the steps waiting for a ride, I told my best friend about the previous history. Then I said, “I don’t know how much I can trust them, how much is enough, but I really loved that.”

I could pull lots of lines from these statements but I’ll take this:

What we stand for—

The Our in

collective
selves
mission
voices

together and individually refuses to participate in a  fundamentally flawed curatorial process. We appreciate that the Whitney Museum has attempted to fashion an institutionally circumscribed bandaid.  However, this is a wound that deeply penetrates the surface of ourskin.

First of all, filmmaking as a medium (art in general, let’s say I’m encompassing all but using a specific medium for its specific history), has been a tool used to hurt, steal [from], and exclude black people. In “How America’s earliest films were based in minstrelsy”, a piece for the Chicago Tribune, Allyson Nadia Field writes about the relationship between minstrelsy and film.

Minstrelsy is the performance and enactment of blackness based on degradation. It is a comical representation of our existence; it is disgusting, it is dehumanizing, and it is an incredibly embedded in American entertainment. “For some reason” this particular over exaggeration of black features and being has managed to infiltrate global thought. With multiple examples of blackness being used outside of an american/western context, it serves as a way to seperate us from others. When a group of people have inherently comical, dirty, lesser characteristics we are inferior from the main players. Although degrading displays of others ideas of blackness are much more covert—therefore the concept of art facilitating antiblackness is hard for people to understand—we’ve found a way to make a modern gollywog.

Field and the Yams Collective mention participation in industry as black people is automatically resistance. While the Yams chose to withdraw as the final act, Field gives the example of Something Good Negro Kiss, a subversion on another interestingly racist film produced by Thomas Edison’s production company. Negro Kiss was made two years after an 18 second short based on a play, The Widow Jones. Two white actors, ones who were in the play, are kissing. Ostensibly about intimacy and touch, the actors are in their bodies, no makeup, but it happens to be littered with minstrel cues. The female actress, whom I have no intention of naming, was an actual minstrel actress who would play “coon songs” and demonstrate a caricature of a threatening black man while not in blackface. I don’t want to give people whose art is worthless to me any props but sometimes I am astounded at how creative racists can get.

Field expounds on just how much minstrelsy has evolved. Most likely, in 2020, no one would have an inkling that the 1896 short was so vehemently racist. Yet it embodies black hate via white bodies, blackness is the reason it exists at all. If we equate minstrelsy to harmful, unimaginative, ugly characterizations of blackness, we are not in a post-minstrel era; we have reimagined it. It’s no wonder that Field hypothesizes that its legacy continues especially with a lack of knowledge about past films in their cultural frame. The insult has certainly still sustained itself.

So, Negro Kiss turns into characterizing their (the actors) blackness through their experience and feeling. Not through the pathetic and hateful expressions used to oppress us and see us as monsters. In this short, the characters are because we are. The automatic assumptions are ones for audience members to shed. Field states:

And that’s what’s so fascinating about the film — it’s getting away with something that we didn’t think existed at the time. And I think they were able to get away with it because it was marketed as a comedy because the performers were black; the idea was that it’s just inherently comedic because they’re African American. That’s how it was framed. But if you’re an African American audience member, that kind of resistance was able to burst through that framing, so it’s working in different ways depending on who the audience is.

Field is working on naming the actors and specs of Negro Kiss. She is also writing a book on the study of minstrelsy and cinema. She is a (non-black) black cinema studies teacher, which isn’t a huge sector, but it’s one that certainly exists with all sorts of cultural understandings of creation. Black cinema studies has got to be one of the most fascinating explorations of art but, in terms of global cinema, it plays a smaller part in overall canon. Therefore, it is much harder to gain access and understand the ties to “art” and ourselves as black viewers. Perhaps it is because to know the history of film, art, black cinema, we must understand the pain and exploitation of blackness. This is something a general public, black people included, are deprived of. There’s reasons for this, one that I am currently researching, but there is a reaction to physical bodies on screen and/or the black people who make films.

Frederick Douglass said that minstrel shows and their performers exhibit “...the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens." Exploitative, frustrating, insidious portrayals of black people so intertwined with entertainment that it’s almost unfathomable to any of us why it could be harmful. From emoji blackface, to black people as memes, to our art as memes, to the use of AAVE as a costume and the butt of a joke. These are all means to exploit our work within humanity and performance while giving no credit. And when ownership is attempted, it can easily be rejected as low-art, unimportant, cheap. It’s almost as if it’s intentional, the unpaid or unnamed black labor. At the time, the black actor from Negro Kiss was somewhat well-known. In his obituary he is Saint Suttle, “laborer.”

There’s a trend every couple of years. People of color get wins, black people start making art and more money from movies (nevermind that holiday films and black ensemble films do very well, no matter how I feel about the content.) Thor and Black Panther were both directed by non-white directors, both immensely talented and ones whose minds I’ve enjoyed seeing developed on screen. While it is doubtful either had much say over these films, it is undeniable, in my humble opinion, the importance of them.

Yes, I explain, expand, hope to learn, and share that the existence of black art is not new. We know that one of the earliest films portraying blackness, was in 1898 (the year Robeson was born!) And yes, we do not wait for approval from white and non-black people; on a whole as people of color we should not. Yes we realize that we are innovators without acknowledgement from outsiders.

But, as we can see, there are limits to access and knowledge, right? It’s hard for others to understand—or consider—a world in which largesse denotes influence. Of course those seen the most, at least in a favorable way since quantity doesn’t equate to humanity or power, are the most successful. Most artistic, most thoughtful.

I don’t think it’s valuable to pretend that we live in a world where all sorts of productions are not influential. It’s not insulting, it’s just the way it is. Many times we bemoan this lack of historical knowledge in terms of things been done, but there’s always understanding that the ignorance is intentional. We acknowledge the world we live in operates on capital, and we know what that entails, why would admitting this be harmful? The parts that are scary come from breaking out of this. Realizing there is no waiting around for representation or not knowing that it’s there, you must look, and white approval is not the onus of merit.

Ok, whatever, so we know. It’s known that these are mega mega mega productions basically to appease people, entertain them, and gain wealth. We also know there is imperialist propaganda, silently supporting state violence—the fact that there is a CIA agent in Black Panther, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is truly laughable—within these films. Disney is a corporation. Disney has rolled out a streaming platform that the very same people who seem to be arbiters of film and the gravitas of art are subscribed to (literally, who cares. That’s not my point, it just points out that we are not as authentic as we would like to present ourselves as.) Disney has a history of racism. Disney took years to make Black Panther and Disney will continue to do what corporations do and the public will continue to watch. I’m not gonna pay for shit but I love baby yoda.

The rollout for the last two Avenger movies highlighted how we lean in to the marketing and tactics; it’s natural to want to be part of something, a larger conversation, so we’re not left out. The movies may all look the same, sound the same, are the same but clearly they are interpreted differently and most importantly FOMO is real as a capitalist construct. I will argue the very same word of mouth operates for “indie” films as well. Marriage Story and The Irishman have been talked about and reviewed at length and they have propelled Netflix to dominate Golden Globe nominations.

Now, if action films are not art and purely entertainment (sure but whatever), if they are able to be screened more easily than a Scorsese (fair enough, it’s true) if they are not an art form and therefore should be excluded in awards season, if these films have an “…absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive and proprietary — a lethal combination” then I wonder what point of history Scorsese operates from.

The following tells us how this is out of touch in a specific manner:

And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other. For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.

To the point where it genuinely upsets me that I have discussed this with friends and can’t seem to not feel like this is an oversimplification of a problem and it could be insulting.

First of all, on a whole, I don’t fucking care about what Marvel fans think. They can know all they need to know about film, they can hate Scorsese, they can champion these films as cinema. I do not care. That has nothing to do with me as an artist and woman. Scorsese is an undeniable heavyweight, someone whose mind—like the other artists, the black artist I mentioned—is important. Love or hate his films, he is who he is, we know him, he will never not be an icon. As my existential crises prevail, I get genuinely anxious about thinking about all these filmmakers passing away because I know their importance to cinema and art is immense.

That being said, watching people scramble to defend multi-billion dollar companies, then others deride those people for even caring about multi-billion dollar companies to specifically make sure we all know he’s right, they aren’t art, and bla bla bla—he’s famous. There’s always an immediate reaction on the internet, but then it becomes pretty prevalent thought, and thinkpieces are churned out and you’re either right or wrong. There’s no nuance because nuance is a stupid word. And I have looked: there is no critique on this issue from a black filmmaker or theorist (for now and as far as I know.) As much as I can say we are heard and seen and make and do, this is the type of thing that hammers home the lack of attention we do get which presents a problem historically.

I know that Scorsese has not had a decent portrayal of black people in any of his films, I know that The Irishman, which is incredibly loosely based on infiltrating a labor group doesn’t have one black face. Although Pennsylvania at the time had gone through a major labor movement at the hands of black laborers along with IWW, and I fucking know that, even with all this goddamn information, it means very little to him, to execs, to the actors. Yes, he restores films. Yes, he has an interest in African films. Yes, as far as I have heard, he has funded “diverse” films but Field says this in her Chicago Tribune piece:

The interesting thing about the Oscars is that it generates enough revenue that it is able to support all the other activities that the Academy does, including this grant program. They also have a very important film archive and the Margaret Herrick Library, which is a major archive of studio papers, production files, financial records. So the Oscars, whatever you think of them, they allow the Academy to provide all these incredible resources for film scholars.

So, what say we about the benefit of industry? She is able to get funding, which literally allows her to do work in a world that doesn’t completely value it, but the whole piece recognizes the themes that still show up today in this space. She is challenged as a non-black educator and scholar on black film, but she is part of preservation and encouragement. For the Oscars, invented to fuck with unions, this is important as a niche cause or maybe important generally but not enough to rock a boat.

For Field, this isn’t only a “do some shit, not follow through totally.” Money is great. Funding is amazing. But when you are going to sit in the very same goddamn room as these Marvel actors and directors and funders, I really question the reception, the messenger, and the ultimate message.

Honestly, what is or isn’t cinema fails to have weight when we collectively pretend that we live in a world without racial, gender, or sexual minorities. Where we ignore literal previous history, like the struggle of Local 8 in Pennsylvania, like the disolution and terror forced upon labor groups because acknowledging that black people, the working class, get us to a future in which we live with dignity. We live in a world where black work is barely taught in film school, where we thrive off isolation, where minstrel displays are up for argument. One in which we must stay afloat knowing all this.

And we are living in a world where an incredible fucking film like Parasite is both a paradigm of global cinema but Lionheart’s rejection from Oscar contention is when it gets much more coverage than when it came out. When we stare in awe at Atlantics wowing Cannes. When speaking about antiblackness, misogyny, misogynoir puts both our jobs and psyche at risk. It is a world where we must know we cannot exist in the way others dictate, we can reconstruct this cadre. But, to do so, starts with the knowledge that, no, actually, financial domination to marginalize didn’t appear in the mid-21st century when capital challenged art more fiercely. Only people who don’t really think about this stuff would say so, at least without qualifiers.

Queen and Slim came out and there has been immense discussion in the black community. As stated, many black people—and we are the creators, the thoughtmakers, pretty much the reason why pop culture is the way it is—know more about the mainstream than what communities put out. The constant message that this is finally It (it’s not) erases work and puts more pressure on the viewer. I know that it’s a bit of a burden to have to think about things not only on a content level, but a racial one, and understand why the film was made, who it was really for and the racial components of marketing and distribution. All that plus the feedback loops that indicate what it will be like for the next year. I have read the Q+S script. I did not like it. I found it fucking embarrassing, honestly. Exploitative and not much content to care about.

When discussing the film, many (largely black) scholars who study black cinema had to iterate that the study of existence of black film exists and black art is Here. In fact, a twitter user gave me access to multiple names I had never heard of so I can do my research.

And, well, this is going to seem pretentious. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe a millenial black woman can’t say she went to film school without sounding like an asshole, who can’t think about how hurtful it was to be there, and who is truly finding a way to move on. Who will do and be and not project doing and being. I have deprived myself of my own humanity or lifting myself up, I have inspected black cinema through a specific lens that I have had to shake, I have subtly shoved aside the importance of our work. And I didn’t know shit. I still don’t but damn. My mentor, a really cool British black dude—a teacher, director, a father—told me to come along with him to hear a talk from Arthur Jafa. That night I knew I wasn’t living as authentically as I thought I was.

Amara, you don’t know who Arthur Jafa is? Nah man.

I got to sit in a packed room, in one of my favorite fancy old indie cinemas, and listen to Jafa talk about his artwork and thought. He’s certainly eccentric. It was very motivating and it changed a part of me, although this was still before I got more clarity on how I would like to exist as an artist. He was so comfortable with being eccentric, although a part of that is definitely what masculinity is able to offer people, and he was honest. He has old videos done with his ex-wife, Julie Dash, of them traveling on the subway out of a city set to some jazz. Avant garde shit.

There’s one piece I will never forget and it was pretty difficult to watch. Jafa made this video collage, taking videos of black people by black people and other races. He used surveillance of black murders and abuse as a vehicle, the strength and comedic parts of survival we use that turn into minstrelsy memes (think interviews people pull from, viral internet videos, literally anything we say people laugh at sometimes and it’s weird.) He also put videos of the violence we can enact on one another. Between all of these videos graphic images of war and death, just a flash, blink and you miss it, to amplify that haunted experience. I was the spectator and the subject.

He explained the detachment he felt making these pieces. One, because we are used to seeing black pain so it becomes something inevitable in our head, we are inherently aggressive, and, two, is survival model. He was looking at this shit every fucking day. That’s hard. Of course one would put your mind on autopilot, think of yourself as an object rather than a piece.

After this "Surge of Black Films” in the 90s, Julie Dash, Arthur Jafa, and a hoard of other black filmmakers—I can never accurately iterate the immense innovation and originality of black people, it cannot be said enough—hit a wall. A glass ceiling, if we may.

Darnell Martin, whose vibrant 1994 romantic comedy “I Like It Like That” was the first studio-produced film to be directed by an African-American woman (it won the New York Film Critics Circle award for best first feature), said she was later blacklisted in the industry for speaking out against racism and misogyny.

“You think, ‘It’s O.K. — you’re like every other filmmaker,’ but then you realize, ‘No,’” she said. “It’s like they set us up to fail — all they wanted was to be able to pat themselves on the back like they did something.”

- They Set Us Up to Fail: Black Director’s of the 90s Speak Out

The piece echoes a familiar plight. I felt the isolation and pain in film school, like I was ignored, and that this was all I was going to be given even if I thought I was the same. The piece poses a solid question:

There are filmmakers of all races and backgrounds who have a spark early on, or cause a sensation at Sundance, and then have difficulty following it up. If that phenomenon is especially common with black filmmakers, what do you think causes the disparity?

This is a question I’m exploring on my own, and not as pertinent to the point, but it is a legitimate one. One that takes up so much literal time, needs so much personal and abstract information, one that is difficult and joyous to learn, that it seems like an incredibly overwhelming undertaking.

Dash explains something we must understand. Maybe not understand; expect, manage. “If you’re in, eventually you’ll be out, and someone else will be in. It shouldn’t be binary like that. We are, we exist.” There’s many similarities in the answers about what they felt, their careers, how the door closing began and if you asked other black filmmakers or black film students, it’s our red thread.

Martin spoke up about misogyny and racism and that cost her. I couldn’t shut the fuck up about it at school if I tried, not that I should have. The problem is, when we dare speak, we are pushing from the outside and it’s not normal, we want everything, and that’s greedy. I am not inserting my blackness into everything, rather, I am here and know what we feel and go through, and this is important as a human on earth, as a contributor, and you see….like Dash says, “we are the main ingredient.” Our notions of living include the bodies we have and space we inherit. We’re living basing our art and perspectives from our truths. This truth knows many people live in the world and this fantasyland others have made up is literally illogical and a lie.

This is a pretty circular topic, many points become revisited, but if we go back to “if that phenomenon is especially common with black filmmakers, what do you think causes the disparity?” This certainly wasn’t something Scorsese seemed to consider. Again: that says a lot about the interpretation of his comment, for or against, and the nature of the industry, the artistic space, itself.

And when someone can surpass purgatory, most times it becomes evident, as their careers evolve, as to why. Industries, corporations, financiers, pick the people who they know will not truly rock the boat. Who will leverage black capitalism, use their identity to shield from criticism, not protect women from sexual abuse on set to save their ass, and who can get their poorly written, strange, stolen black thought and misguided interpretation Art, greenlit. Their existence is important, definitely, but they’re not saying much. Just enough for them to be championed. Generally, they lack integrity or a true sense of where they want to take their creativity.

As expressed, I, personally, find Queen and Slim mortifying. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t art (in the most basic of senses, it’s a film), or wasn’t enjoyable to others, or it didn’t (kinda?) mean a lot for the black community. A black woman directed a film written by a black lesbian. They were (desperately) trying to portray the complexity of existing while black and being in danger at the hands of the state through this intense visual language. Some believe that we have to go easy on these films, things that are Black and get into the “mainstream”, because the world tries to fuck with us moving ahead, in this space. But it is a piece of work. With this release we are allowed to critique it’s flaws in content and politics because it does exist, and it is art, and it is just as valid and vapid like Marriage Story.

We know that word of mouth is imperative to how we discuss and perceive films. We know companies give incentives for award campaigns or critics to raise buzz, viewership, attendance. We know what types of “progressive” films get that sort of time and exposure. And, frankly, if other films can be exhausting, or silly, or overt about (white) womanhood, or other communities, can be mediocre we obviously can, too. Unfortunately, the level of success in comparison can be a goddamn shame, because this is how worth is measured. It’s indicative of our planet but there’s no reason to protect public works because of perceived feelings of inferiority. It’s happening with or without us.

And, we know who Martin Scorsese is. If Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi is poor filmmaking (I mean…I think so), and it is still making tons of money for Disney, and if we know about the stance it took as apolitical while funded by a huge corporation then his opportunity to do Knives Out came from where? He has a total rebrand with this film, and he can rebrand himself, maybe it’s warranted, who cares as I have no interest due to the last fumble. But he gets the second chance to emerge! And, as Scorsese says, make “cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

This “art form” which those before us (who?) struggled to make “an equal to music or literature” only exists where they are found. It’s a sentiment I so wholeheartedly agree with, that film is equal to music or literature, would almost die for but whose art form? He speaks of Hitchcock—a filmmaker I semi-admire—as someone who made his films a franchise, a franchise that could be shared with the public but still be sustainable entertaining art. This ugly white British dude with a penchant for torturing his actresses and not respecting women makes (misogynist but interesting) noir films, some of the first, and retains success? Whaaaat?

And in a world where capitalism has allowed this false idea of ownership, goaded people into memberships on platforms where his films are streaming, created a panic-inducing level of “missing out” I ask again: who owns what? What public shared his franchise? Was it women (yes, but my point still stands)? Was it black people? Was it black women?

First of all, I reject the other parts about artistry in films. This is the only defense I will give big corporations, and they fucking fuck that up just as much, there is more than one type of filmmaker. Costume design, set design, VFX, editing (even if some are very clearly…poorly done) are labors of love. It doesn’t become less because this is capitalist pro-imperialist bullshit. What those people did is the foundation of filmmaking.

Again, I do not care what a Marvel, or Star Wars fan, or whatever cinephile or non-cinephile thinks about Scorsese. It doesn’t matter. It’s hypocritical to lay down this idea of superiority from someone who is very intelligent but profits in a similar avenue. The causes he cares about do not mean he is shielded from criticism or disappointment. Just as he is allowed to make this critique, we are allowed to see the irony, maybe hypocrisy, feel ire over it. I told a friend of mine what he said and her response made me laugh: “oh, give me a break.”

I struggle with understanding that we cannot look for, “justice in the awards system. We are building a new world” or that we won’t ask to sit at the table but break it, needing to eat, and truly knowing limitations. Great, Parasite is getting a nom from wherever, and it’s an amazing anti-capitalist South Korean film that is masterful in practice. Global cinema is from mostly homogenous countries that have very different structures, formations, and past history. We become enamored with the foreign.

The auteurs are catalogued, the Criterion collection is made, film canon is an unspoken list that, as filmmakers, we know. For the west we have the fascination of another language or different accents and the way our “developed” countries portray our art. For the East, South Korea and Japan, particularly South Korea, have been able to make huge strides within the film community. Bollywood is a part of global cinema, the early films being a feat of grand proportions.

What about in not-so homogenous Latin America? They constantly go off although the who goes off there happens to ignore black and indigenous people, like Brazil. Or the places that have a very deep painful history at the present mostly shared as one, like Palestine, or the use of indigenous peoples literal land. Even within more “homogenous” societies, many of the marginalized (gender and sexual minorities, disabled people, formerly incarcerated people) are ignored.

We have a glarious, obvious, hole.

And there’s the part I personally know. Blackness. Our art, bodies, personhoods are much less likely to touch that cinema canon. The films that define the way we think about films, the way we learn to be filmmakers, the beauty we see in different people. This is obviously not always. Nothing is always and if pointing out disparity gives one that impression, there’s nothing I can do.

There are plenty that have done canon work, in theory. Sembane was amazing, Michaux a pioneer, LA Rebellion were fighters, Haile Gerima, James Baldwin, Cheryl Dunye, Barry Jenkins, the list goes on. There are also some that have genuinely managed to be praised while being so artfully adept (Moonlight, Cidade de Deus, If Beale Street Could Talk, When They See Us.) But these have a specific time frame to be solidified in.

We can also map the trajectory of the filmmakers and the actors future work. We can see just exactly how these films get archived. After all, because of Beyoncé’s Lemonade, Daughters of the Dust came out of the fucking vault. This film, an incredibly acclaimed one, kept away from the public for a very specific purpose not just because we can be flighty with film memory. This leads to, like pointed out, lack of knowledge of our black history but also the fucking pedagogy. Aint that some shit?

It’s ironic because noted capitalist shill (this is a joke) Ryan Coogler’s first films are incredible, considered independent. He got the opportunity to make Black Panther and took it. And it was good, to me, and it was incredibly enjoyable. Somehow Rian Johnson can exist in these two spaces to The Last Jedi as a nightmare to see, capital garbage, right?, to Knives Out. And go figure, everyone wants to see that final Star Wars movie.

Blackness, the diaspora that reaches this global cinema canon seems to be so suspended and thought of as secretive to get to and much of it is. There’s this feeling that Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep is so absurdly old but it came out in 1978, Taxi Driver in ‘76. There’s an expectation that I know our first feminist film pioneers that, if acknowledged at all, black women came after. And, this one really bothers me, is Nollywood an “art form” that is “equally to music or literature"? It sure is. We don’t have to prove it.

Nollywood is a billion dollar industry in one of the richest, most corrupt, happiest countries in Africa. It is beloved in homes, in people throughout the diaspora, immigrants. It took over a Bollywood boom in Nigeria, popular because we love drama, and fucking everyone in the diaspora and those who live around us knows about Nollywood. The thing is, it operates differently, there is not nearly as much money for equipment and post, etc because it’s a more complicated kind of money making machine (about that money issue…) And many are getting more interested in Nigerian film, not just the over-the-top concept of Nollywood, it is looked through in an incredibly western lens.

What’s weird to me is that while Bollywood can be as well, I have had a big chunk of my adult life being able to understand the merits and importance of it. This does, and will, but it doesn’t at this scale yet. And I know how people do feel about Bollywood.

Was Ryan Coogler not making art? Would Nollywood, which has high production rates and countless amounts of stories (also if you have ever been in a black church hours are spent there. It’s worse in Nigeria, so they are hours long), but for different reasons is difficult to see on a serious, imaginative, creative, innovative level be art?

Would that count to you in your new thesis on capitalism and it’s ills within filmmaking, Mr. Martin Marx? Superhero films are being directed by women, is that not something? It’s mostly white, pretty sexist, and I don’t care, but we can be proud of that, in a way, and still recognize what capitalism poisons.

Perhaps it’s not cause Scorsese said it at all. But he said it within a manner where there was this, like, specific Hollywood or mainstream mentality that didn’t value money which never existed. Or it indicates there’s this world where everyone is on equal footing and capitalism doesn’t coerce and manipulate people. What does, “[for anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out] the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art” mean? Like now it’s dire? Just now? Can you think of a time, particularly against a group of people, where a situation has been brutal and inhospitable before and happens to still be if one were to be at your status?

A friend of mine told me, when I brought this up, “I don’t want kids to go to film school to make Marvel movies.” I agree and I will always feel this way. However, I admit, I was a little burned. Here I am moving towards my future of existence, learning, trying to do instead of just project. I live to make art, organize, not drown after getting myself into 200k+ in debt just so I can attain some sort of contentment.

My school experience was life-changing and I can’t change it anyway. If I could I probably wouldn’t. But I am not the girl that entered a couple years back. And, now, I surely do not want to make a Marvel film but I like having a home and parents to back me up, even if they drive me crazy. I want to eat, too. I want to be scream and have someone listen to me. But I don’t need Hollywood. I know that I get disappointed at the state of film, art, but I know the beauty and there’s so much to explore in the present, from the past, and in the future.

Not only do we have different perspectives, we have different material experiences leading to ingrained thought that is mind bogglingly difficult to challenge. The black artistic experience carries a very bizarre weight and history. We embrace global cinema and we want to reject the racist, xenophobic, anti-islamic, anti-semitic, and particularly to right now orientalist way in which we accept things.

While all that comes with a cost to the artists, filmmakers, et all, black exclusion is a major side effect. And it is not (nor will ever be the definition of antiblackness) just in quantity. Many filmmakers don’t think to acknowledge that because they don’t have to. Even with friends, the gap can be so evident because of the way the world has been presented.

I also know the pain and isolation I felt, that I am moving on from, but need to acknowledge because I turned off almost 3 years worth of self-compassion and activated extremely harmful self-discipline. The things I’ve gone through are not only because I am a black woman, but no one but me, in that space, right then, understands what I’ve been through. The only others were 4 other people who I could barely reach, in a sea of wealth, and non black faces. Yea, you’re set up to fail.

So what reality is Scorsese’s? Is it the one in Taxi Driver where the urban landscape is only aware of blackness when it comes to crime? It’s important to note the script by Paul Schrader has a bunch of black people dead by the end of it so…well good that that’s not the ending realized on film. And even if Taxi Driver is a deep portrayal of racism and misogyny, straight from the bad dude’s eyes, it’s not the only film about either.

It’s lauded for what it is “supposed” to portray and how complex Travis is in 1976, yet Killer of Sheep (which began production in ‘72) seems to be much farther of Taxi Driver’s portrayal. It would be apples-oranges if one was accepted in the same framework at all, whether that framework is internally important and imperative to survival or not, but it isn’t.

Or was this reality in the Irishman that imagines a very shallow labor world without black presence? Is it Marriage Story where we hear the same bullshit from two annoying white heterosexual people and a man’s disgusting self-centered mind? Noah Baumbach has not met very many black people, people of color, he has wanted to cast in his visual landscape. Is it Knives Out where the director was able to overcome the question of “real art” he compromised in his previous film? What propriety?

And, to be clear, some of the best films and music videos, visual productions I have ever seen are by black people. The other parts of filmmaking, too, production design, editing, sound design, etc. Truly the most incredibly artistic feats. It doesn’t need to be repeated but it does because I feel like it. I can guarantee that this statement would not be made, at least not in this manner, by our black contemporaries. Ever. Cause that’s not the fucking whole truth.

It wouldn’t start from art is being denigrated and isolated, when that was the shit from jump. It’s no indictment on him, or male filmmakers, successful white ones, successful women, women of color, non black people; no positing black and ethnic minorities above or below.

We know we’re here, do you? Art before capital means we are seen but not heard, which is preferred over heard but not seen, but that crumb is given. That’s interesting. The simple resistance to this type of thought he presented doesn’t mean it’s wrong or even worth it to hear from others—even from fucking Marvel fans, even if their anger is ridiculous and misplaced.

It’s so fucking funny because there’s a whole world out there that can seem to exist and invoke the black body only when needed or remembered. Otherwise the state of art is going to continue to go to shambles if “we” want money more than true art, and the kind of growth of feedback based on capital has never shut people out or suppressed thought like before.

“In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk.” Glad to know you’ve been able to breathe until now.