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Black Identities Take Centre Stage in DOXA Special Program

Guest curator Rebecca Carroll reflects on her own experience in 'Black Life Is, Ain't and Still Rises.'

Frederick Blichert 4 May 2016TheTyee.ca

Frederick Blichert is a Vancouver-based writer completing a practicum at The Tyee. He is a student at UBC's Graduate School of Journalism and writes for various film publications.

Feminism, racism, and the individual experience of being black occupy the screen at this year's DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver, where New York-based social critic Rebecca Carroll curates a highly personal special program, Black Life Is, Ain't and Still Rises.

Carroll chose its three films, she says, because they mirrored her own arc of self-discovery and personal growth as a black woman in America. And each confirms that black identities can't be confined.

In Black Is... Black Ain't, the late Marlon Riggs doesn't just break down negative stereotypes but moves away from any single definition of blackness. Playfully using his grandmother's gumbo as a metaphor for varieties of blackness, Riggs draws us in to an inclusive concept of black identity that stands in opposition to the racism, sexism, colourism, and homophobia that manifest even within black communities -- as well as from those outside them.

"There are as many kinds of black people as there are black people to be," says Barbara Smith in the film.

Riggs died of AIDS in 1995, at the age of 37, with Black Is... Black Ain't incomplete. His friend and colleague Christian Badgely followed Riggs' production notes to finish the film.

Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise is a film biography of Maya Angelou, the iconic American poet, memoirist, actress, singer, filmmaker and civil rights activist who passed away in 2014. Alternating between a rich array of archival footage and interviews with Angelou and a great many people who knew her, the film is a moving tribute to an inspiring woman.

What stands out is the scope of Angelou's cultural reach. Long active in the U.S. civil rights movement, Angelou inspired some of the biggest talents in American arts and entertainment. As actress Alfre Woodard (Gray's Anatomy, 12 Years a Slave) says in the film, "Maya Angelou's fingerprints are indelible on the lives she touched."

This Is The Life, an early documentary by Ava DuVernay, best known for the Academy Award-winning Selma, chronicles the community that was built around hip-hop open-mic nights at The Good Life, a health food store in South Central Los Angeles, between 1989 and 1995.

DuVernay, who was herself a regular performer at The Good Life, explores the rising popularity of hip-hop at the time and the rules performers followed to create a unique collective and an alternative to the era's dominant East Coast rap, persistently tied in mainstream media to gang violence.

Scratchy old videos of amazing, high-energy performances convey a powerful sense of the community that existed among the film's subjects, as each recalls the kinetic creative energy that defined the period.

Spanning over 20 years, each of the three films alternates between struggle and celebration, tapping into music as a key creative outlet for their subjects.

The films celebrate a multiplicity of expressions of blackness, collectively touching on intersecting identities and straying into questions of gender, class, and sexual orientation.

Riggs was certainly no stranger to the complexities of black identity. A gay man, Riggs had directed the controversial Tongues Untied a few years before undertaking Black Is; it explored both blackness and homosexuality. His last project expanded his vision to challenge additional stereotypes and social expectations.

Both Maya and The Good Life, meanwhile, make room for women's experiences of blackness and black culture. The films explore powerful voices that fought oppression while creating moving and inspiring art.

Carroll, the programmer of the DOXA series, is an American writer and radio producer based in New York. Her work focuses on race in America and has appeared in publications including the Guardian, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Ebony, and the Daily Beast. She has written several non-fiction books including Saving the Race and Sugar in the Raw.

The Tyee spoke with her about Black Life Is, Ain't and Still Rises, to find out what inspired her to bring these particular films together in Vancouver for DOXA.

Here's what she had to say:

The Tyee: Why did you choose these particular films?

Carroll: They're three films that have a kind of narrative arc about walking through America as a black person. 

When I discovered Black Is... Black Ain't, it was a really crucial moment for me in my late teens/early twenties.

It was just such a broad, beautiful, concise, and nuanced way to talk about the black experience, and it was the first time that I realized I didn't have to be a certain kind of black.

[Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise] fit more into the middle, because I discovered [Angelou's] writing when I was younger but didn't read her much until I was in college. She of course was absolutely a touchstone for me in terms of my black identity.

I'm such an admirer of Ava DuVernay and have followed her work. It struck me that [This Is the Life] would be a great film to include, because she's now been anointed with the film she did about Martin Luther King, Selma, but she has always made films, and she has always been committed to black culture.

How do you see the identities intersecting in Black Life Is, Ain't and Still Rises?

Marlon owned his individualism in a way that I understood because I really had to cultivate a sense of individuality before anything else.

Maya and Ava are both women who are not necessarily on the front lines of [feminism], but they clearly are feminist. I saw in them strength, and I saw in them a sisterhood, or some kind of ancestral connection, a matrilineal connection.

Black women have always been feminists, even outside of the traditional feminist structure, certainly in America.

How should we understand the struggle and celebration that are in all three films?

The struggle is such a constant, and such a through-line of the black narrative in America. And that makes the joy so much richer. It's another part of the struggle, almost an extension of the struggle.

I first experienced my blackness in a way that was negative. Once I learned to recognize where that came from, what systemic racism means, what it means to walk in a black body, I realized that what comes with that is a sense of gratification, and this real joy.

Yes, the struggle is difficult. That's why it's called a struggle. But there's a sense of owning and understanding, and a sense of community. You know that there's this emotional legacy, and being part of that is really an affirmation.

What do you hope audiences will take away from these films?

I hope that they will take away a kind of conversancy, a sense of fluidity in the nuance that is blackness.

I hope that it will be enlightening and insightful and entertaining.

I hope that the white folks who are seeing this will feel not merely moved but also slightly uncomfortable.

Black lives are in the zeitgeist, and in some ways that's very good, because that creates a sense of receptiveness from white people. So I would say that for the white audience that watches these films, I hope that they see multi-dimensions in blackness and not a monolith but a real depth of cultural poignancy.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

To hear more from Rebecca Carroll on Black Life Is, Ain't and Still Rises, read her DOXA essay.

Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise plays at the Vancity Theatre on Sunday, May 8 at 5:30 pm, and again at the Cinematheque on Sunday, May 15 at 3:30 pm. Black Is... Black Ain't plays at the Vancity Theatre on Monday, May 9 at 4:45 pm. This Is The Life plays at the Vancity Theatre on Friday, May 13 at 2:45 pm. For more information, visit the DOXA website.  [Tyee]

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