Black women in film are perhaps more contentious a discussion than black men
in film. If asked, you could come up with a few black male actors who’ve
been the lead in mainstream film; Samuel L. Jackson, Dennis Haysbert, Denzel
Washington, Don Cheadle, Forest Whitaker, to name a few – oh let’s not
forget the ubiquitous Will Smith. And of course they are all American.
Name a black actress in a recent film now… having difficulty aren’t you? From Precious | April, 2010
Get Happy!
The Happy Soul Festival Returns
The award-winning festival, Happy Soul Festival, which is supported by Film London
and Arts Council of England, is London's premier celebration of film, arts
and music, dedicated to creating awareness of well-being and mental health
in the African Caribbean and Asian communities.
The festival - which launched in 2007 - runs from 20th -30th April, and will provide audiences with an abundance of opportunities to view a diverse range of British, Asian, Somali, African-American and Israeli films which explore well-being issues within these communities.
The two-week, free festival will comprise over 20 film-screenings and well-being themed events taking place in Kingston, Wimbledon, Merton, Lambeth, Sutton and Richmond.
Films being showcased during the festival include: the BAFTA and Oscar award-winning Precious, London River which is set during the 7/7 terrorist attacks on London, The Color Purple, the Iranian drama About Elly, and Chris Rock's Good Hair.
The exciting line-up of confirmed guests and participants for the 2010 Festival include; the award-winning author Alice Walker,(pictured above) British author and broadcaster Aminatta Forna, actor Colin Salmon (Die Another Day and The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency), TV presenter Brenda Emmanus, actor Ashley Walters (Life & Lyrics and Hustle), commentator Bonnie Greer and Dhol drum performer Johnny Kalsi.
Festival highlights include An Audience with Alice Walker event and the Happy Soul Youth Film Awards, which will see young people from schools and community groups in South London making short films which explore mental health awareness from their experience. Each film is judged by a panel of industry professionals and screened on the 27th April when the winner will be announced.
Cary Sawhney, the Festival's Director says: "Happy Soul's core aim is to create a greater awareness of mental health in the minority ethnic communities where these issues are often stigmatised, or people are unaware of the services that we can offer. Our evaluation of previous Festival's shows that over half the people attending the Festival have said they now know more about mental health."
For program details visit: www.happysoulfestival.co.uk
REVIEW: Precious
by Jennifer G. Robinson
Actress Gabourey Sidibe casts an unlikely figure at award ceremonies these days. She’s the centre of attention and is not the usual kind of lady sashaying across crimson-coloured pathways. No lollipop lady here. You see Sidibe is the star of Precious, a challenging story about an obese, dark-skinned black girl and just as her character often mused Sidibe caresses the silk of her couture dress daring anyone to tell her she’s not beautiful.
Set in a 1987 Harlem, Precious tells the story of Clarice ‘Precious’ Jones as she tries to negotiate her way through a truly horrific (Lars von Trier, Dancer in the Dark, every horror visited upon character) existence. Despite her aspirations being crushed incessantly, Precious finds ways to escape her ordeals through daydreaming. We hear her thoughts about having a ‘light-skinned boyfriend’ or ‘dancing on BET’. During the repeated rapes by her father, Precious floats away and sees herself as a superstar on the red-carpet, handsome escort in tow. One poignant moment comes when she imagines herself as a slim white girl with big, bouncy, blond hair dressing for the day.
Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, takes a very unashamed look at the abuse of children in our society which is most often perpetrated by family members - something which tabloid newspapers forget. Its' star is not an archetypal model to which audiences should immediately gravitate. Our main point of reference for this story is a 20-stone-plus black girl. How often do we see that, unless it’s through comedy? Some of the most squeamish moments are watching the base relationship between Precious and her mother. Mo’Nique truly deserves all the accolades she’s so far received, most lately the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. She gives a powerful performance as Precious’ mother who abandons Precious in ways that had she literally abandoned her, might have offered Precious far better options in life.
Education becomes Precious’ escape route through the direction of teacher Ms Rain( Paula Patton), and another interesting performance comes from Mariah Carey. Flamboyant director Daniels really scrubbed off any diva pretensions she may have had. He reportedly brushed her top lip with a mascara brush to produce a moustache for added authenticity. Ouch. Another musician clambering into the acting water is Lenny Kravitz bringing welcomed eye-candy to screen. Speaking of music; this was well chosen. It’ll have some of us reaching for that back-catalogue of records (yes, vinyl) in particular, Jean Carne disco classic ‘Was That All It Was’.
Of course a film like this was never going to get away without controversy and this comes abundantly. Honestly, it was not on the top of my list of films to see. The opinion being; here we go again, another film featuring black people who’re solely defined by ‘race’-constructed ‘issues’. Breathe a sigh of relief, ‘race’ is not bludgeoned over the head; it’s a more implicit element to the film. This story could be anybody’s story; there are girls who are abused in the ways this film discusses from all ‘races’. Of course other corners are miffed that it doesn’t show black people in a positive light, as if we all lived in 'Cosby Show-land'. The problem is so few films with black stars come into mainstream and when they do, they are made to be all things to all people, which they cannot be.
Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey (Daniels too) are some of the heavy-weight financial backers of this film. Winfrey’s leaving her iconic talk-show may well coincide with a desire to fully pursue other projects such as Precious. Perry’s rapid rise to media-mogul status was achieved through his creation of comedic characters such as Madea, a no nonsense talking, overweight black woman played by Perry. A Christian, Perry combines Madea and other characters usually women with religion as a backdrop to enable resolution of narrative plots. Madea Goes to Jail and Diary of a Mad Black Woman are just two financially successful productions from Perry with his latest, I Can Do Bad All By Myself starring Taraji P. Henson. These credits have earned Perry the means to become the first African American to own his own film company.
Perry was recently involved in a ‘delicate’ exchange of words with director (some might say establishment) stalwart, Spike Lee. Lee claims Perry’s characterisations of African Americans in Perry’s television shows Meet The Browns and House of Payne hark back to the days of ‘coonery’ and ‘buffoonery’ of 1960s television Amos and Andy Show (picture the UK’s Blue Mountain Theatre’s negative depiction of Caribbean traits). Perry is naturally peeved.
What we need to remember are pioneering directors such as Melvin Van Peebles who made his own film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in 1971 through blood, sweat and tears. He made it in an industry which wouldn’t give him the time of day; in fact he too had to borrow money from other black actors including Bill Cosby to get Sweetback made. This film (though most remember Shaft) kick-started a new, money-making genre of film, Blaxploitation. Yes, the genre went on to eat itself and create its own gross stereotypes but once this era ran its course, a new breed of directors came forth to herald film depicting better characterised black people of which Spike Lee is a beneficiary.
We may not like the ways in which we are currently seen in the media. However, if we’re to take charge of what we see of ourselves in front of the screen we’ll have to get real about who’s behind the screen. We’ll get to make the uncomfortable likes of Precious as well as the love stories, the action adventures, the science fiction, the thrillers, which feature black actors in fully-fledged human form.
Precious is on general release now
REVIEW: The Road
By Jennifer G. Robinson
The demise of planet Earth comes dramatically and is often vision-ed in
biblical proportions…well, as far as Hollywood is concerned. Witness films
such as 2012, The
Book of Eli, and Knowing - such are societal fears of
current times. Whilst these films give some reasoning behind a cataclysmic
end (dubious Mayan mythology aside), The Road’s take offers us no tangible
map over Earth’s end which adds to the uneasy tension within the film,
feeding into our fears over unseen threats.
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name, written by Cormac McCarthy, The Road tells the story of the relationship between a father and son as they travel to where they believe they will find salvation after some kind of catastrophe which has rendered their world almost uninhabitable.
It stars Viggo Mortensen called ‘Papa’ by the boy. One could be forgiven for forgetting that Mortensen’s already appeared prominently in the at times, clunky Peter Jackson trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Mortensen has emerged to give fine performances in A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Equally tender are performances given by Kodi Smit-McPhee. The boy is transformed along the journey as he begins to understand a humanity which should exist between people, a humanity which if his father ever he had is slowly leaving as he desperately tries to keep them alive. The few science fiction elements of The Road are but a back-drop to the drama of the relationship between father and son as it explores inter-dependency and love.
In its observation of the responsibility (nay, burden) of parenthood, the film asks, to what lengths you would go to save your child’s life. How would you deal with the cloying fear that you may not be able to protect and feed your child - a luxury we in the west take for granted. The father believes in this fragile expectation of provision and by comparison in some ways the boy’s mother who we see earlier in the film, played by Charlize Theron, is stronger. She is more categorical about the terms of her existence. As an aside, some of these ideas are explored in Toni Morrison’s Beloved where, rather than submit children to the horrors of slavery, they are given death.
McCarthy’s style most recently came to film audiences in No Country for Old Men. McCarthy’s writing in The Road is pared. Sentences are honed down to their barest essentials mirroring the desperate circumstances of the protagonists as they cling to life. This apparent simplistic style by no means detracts from the complexity of the themes which it discusses. The film however, gives away too much too early in the narrative taking away some of the much needed suspense. Even with its attempt at minimal colour, the film presents us with too much. Where the book allows our imagination to envisage a landscape which is irredeemably grey from some type of nuclear fall-out, the film gives some distracting respite.
The book’s ending is convenient for Hollywood in it’s offerings of hope - which the film delivers. But why could we not countenance the idea of no humanity? Why can we not face the idea that our cultural dance amongst each other is just a veneer of flimsily constructed morés easily blown away by the lack of the real essentials which sustain life? What if there is no scrap of decency between humans who could be reduced to rabidly cannibalistic packs? Well, in the words of another human survivor of another post-apocalyptic film…”You maniacs! You blew it up…God damn you all to hell!”
The Road is on general release.