Like the rest of the world, Empire magazine was shocked by the killing of George Floyd, in fact, it was by no means an event in the United States. His dying words, "I can't breathe," have become an important slogan in the American social movement in recent days.
As a UK-based publication, it's easy to feel isolated, but we stand in solidarity with blacks and people of color against racist violence and systemic oppression, and we support the widespread protests that are currently taking place.
No matter where we are, there are things that can be done. We can get information and stay informed. We can sign the petition. We can donate to causes that support black people and help fight racist oppression. And, as movie fans, we can support black filmmakers.
For decades, especially in recent years, as abuses of power have become more common on social media, black writers and directors have been creating art that makes it the topic of the moment, exploring and interrogating systemic racism, black people killed by police, privilege and micro-aggression, and the power to portray love, community, friendship, and the unified voice.
As film fans, as people living in a country rooted in colonialism, as citizens of a country with its own system of oppression, and as a small island hundreds of miles away from the United States (in distance, but not on issues), we value the voices of blacks in film more than ever, educate ourselves, participate in the stories that black filmmakers tell us, and constantly give us insight into the experiences of blacks and people of color in the United States and elsewhere.
As Roger Ebert puts it, "Cinema is like a machine that generates empathy" — and there are plenty of films that better understand the black experience. Here are some related movies, please read.
"Do What You Should"
（1989）
Smartphones and social media aside, Spike Lee's third film (now more than 30 years old) is almost completely modern. The story takes place on the streets of Brooklyn's Bed-Stuven district, and on a sweltering day at a famous Pizzeria owned by Italian-Americans, where tension simmers beyond the surface.
From Sal's son Pino's overtly racist beliefs, to deeper, more insidious prejudices ("Why aren't there blacks on your walls?"). Buggin' Out, a black guy, asked, referring to the white faces adorning Sal's restaurant, where the customers were predominantly black and POC. Lee's film unfolds in sharp places, exploring scenes of dialogue between various neighborhood voices, both delicate and completely direct. Although it eventually led to a flood of violence, sadness and regret, along the way, it was also filled with the frequent explosions of vitality, life and public enemies.
"Flutwell Station"
（2013）
In the early hours of New Year's Day 2009, Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Auckland resident, boarded a transit train home. After getting involved in a brawl, he and other passengers were arrested by BART police when they arrived at Fortwell Station. Unarmed, Grant, face down with his hands behind his back, was shot dead hours later by a white policeman.
Ryan Coogler's first film opens with a realistic phone clip that captures the shocking event and then emotionally recreates Grant's last 24 hours on that fateful night. Even though we see Grant flawed, it's clear he's trying to be the best version of himself, and Michael Scott is the best he can be. B. Jordan's powerful and serious performance can't help but resonate with people. The police officer who killed Grant served only 11 months in prison, illustrating the injustice that often accompanies the killing of George Freud, Abery, Brenna Taylor and countless other black people.
Blind Spot
（2018）
In the more than 90-minute film, writers and stars David Diggers and Raphael Casso, as well as Mexican-American director Carlos López Estrada, present us with a compelling crash course about the intersection of police shootings, white privilege, and gentrification. Diggs plays Colin, waiting for the last three days of his one-year probation, and Cassar plays his grumpy white friend Miles, whose reckless behavior could send Colin back to prison.
In a way, the film is like a colorful love letter to Grant as the surrounding environment begins to change, and its tone shifts from comical ultra vires between brothers to dramatic dramatic scenes and conflicts, both of which are reinforced in a way. In the opening scene, Colin witnesses a white policeman firing a shot at a black man without hesitation, and the film visually expresses his increasing injuries and mental trauma over the ensuing time, and extends into nightmarish scenes and rap-style self-talk, filled with powerful and memorable imagery.
"Block Boys"
（1991）
Written and directed by the late great John Singhton, Block Boys has never lost its influence in the decades since its release. It's primarily a film about growing up, telling the story of Terry Sdale growing up from a boy to an adult in south-central Los Angeles, living and being involved in a gang culture rife with drugs and crime.
While Singleton's film largely depicts black-to-black violence, it more broadly depicts the institutions that create and sustain poor, non-white communities, and the intimidation of police officers who exacerbate conflict, breed anger and frustration, and lead to more violence. Cooper Gooding Jr. and Ace Cooper both gave excellent performances, but Lawrence Fishburne was the angry style of the father of the chaotic relationship—a sympathetic, intelligent businessman who sought to teach the younger generation about racial prejudice, the knowledge of working within and under the system, and gentrification in the film's illustrious scenes.
"Meet Yesterday"
（2019）
The film, made by Spike Lee, the directorial debut of Stefon Bristol, can be roughly described as a combination of Do What You Should and Back to the Future — a prime example of how genre films have become powerful filmmaking tools for telling black stories. Eden Duncan-Smith and Dante Krichylo play C.J., a gifted friend who lives in Brooklyn and cracks the code for time travel. When C.J. his brother is killed by a racist cop, the two use their inventions to go back and save him. Like a typical through movie, their mission is always to circle in unexpected directions.
Adapted from his short film, Bristol's film offers a pair of smart, determined young black protagonists who are fully aware of the problems facing their communities and determined to create change – Bristol uses science fiction to express the seemingly endless cycle, with the black community finding itself violent and futile in the face of police brutality. As a result, the under-90-minute traversal film became a stylish, thought-provoking film.
The Hate You Give
George Tillman Jr.'s film The Hate You Give is based on Angie Thomas's best-selling novel of the same name, and the incitement in this touching film is familiar to many blacks: Starr Carter, a black girl, witnesses her childhood friend Carril murdered by a white policeman after being stopped by the police. What follows is a thoughtful consideration of the "Black Lives Matter Too" movement, code conversion, and more—rather than the themes that ostensibly are typical of teen movies.
In a way, that's why Hate You Give is a must-see movie. Told entirely from Starr's perspective, when the film begins, she gradually adapts to her two completely different roles—she's a smart street girl when she's around her black friends; and she becomes more withdrawn and reticent when she's at a predominantly white private school. Finding her true voice and using it to influence change is a powerful arc, and it also provides a perfect way for young viewers to educate themselves about what racism is, the different forms it can take, and the huge negative effects it can have.
The Queen and the Thin Man
In Melina Massoucas' The Queen and the Thin Man, a young black man and woman (daniel kalua and Judy Turner-Smith, respectively) are stopped at a traffic checkpoint. But the ending didn't end up as you might expect, but ended with a white police officer dying in the street and being shot in self-defense. The young couple knew that the chances of being exonerated were almost zero because of the color of their skin, so they immediately decided to flee.
Next up is a movie about how the world chooses to look at black people: While some call it the queen and the slim monster, Uncle Earl, the colorful pimp played by Bokem Woodbein, once called our fugitive protagonist "Black Bonnie and Clyde." Kalua and Turner-Smith are easy to support, and Lena Witt's script is helpful by maintaining a firm honesty throughout the film's devastating ending.
"Selma"
（2014）
Ava DeYole's excellent third film eschews the more traditional approach of biopics, focusing instead on the 1965 year in which Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oylo) led a historic campaign for African Americans in Selma.
After the murder of George Floyd, Martin Luther King Jr. 's words became important and correct. But while emphasizing Martin Luther King Jr.'s oratory skills, Selma also focuses on supporters who helped him fight for civil rights. They were right next to him during the peaceful march on the Edmund Petus Bridge, a beautiful scene that was carefully designed but looked increasingly horrific when the police attacked. In the United States today, there is a similar escalation in police nonviolent protests, indicating that little has changed in the past 60 years, and given this, it is more influential and relevant.
"If Beale Street Could Talk"
Following the Oscar-winning hit Moonlight Boy, Barry Jenkins directed a romantic and infuriating film based on James Baldwin's novel of the same name. Set in harlem in the 1970s, young Finney (played by Stephen James) and Tish (played by Kiki Lane) fall in love. When Finney is falsely imprisoned, Tish becomes pregnant and he is enraged, leaving their family desperately trying to clear Finney's name.
In addition to humanizing Finney, "If Beale Street Can Talk" brilliantly shows that racism is not just about a few "bad apples" (a phrase that has been used in recent weeks), but a systemic problem for black people. In Brian Terry Henry's heartbreaking transformation as Daniel, we also see that the fear of being targeted persists long after his release from prison.
Thirteenth Amendment
（2016）
Ava DeJole followed Selma with a must-see documentary about the prison industry, depicting how the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (abolition of slavery) gave way to mass black incarceration, allowing institutionalized young blacks to be used as laborers.
For about 100 minutes, Djoglia gave us a history lesson throughout the day—exploring how the law changed centuries ago, how the media and politics created and maintained the image of non-whites as dangerous criminals who need to be held, and how prisons and private companies profited from those who were held. This is definitely not to be missed, and, in addition to being able to watch on Netflix, the streaming service on YouTube is also free to watch.
Tinted Glasses
Ava DeJole's four-episode miniseries, Colored Glasses, unambiguously tells the story of the so-called "Central Park Five" — now better known as the "Innocent Five" — focusing on how the lives of black youth Kevin Richardson, Antroni McRae, Youssef Salam, Corey Wise, and Raymond Santana changed forever after they were convicted of a rape they hadn't committed.
The first two episodes are particularly heart-wrenching, with white cops forcing disoriented boys to make false confessions and then swiftly taking them to court. In 1989, Donald Trump himself spent $85,000 in a full-page advertisement in four newspapers demanding the execution of the two young men — a fact that Djogliel emphasized but didn't stay on — just one way they saw us connecting the past with the present. It's been more than a year since it debuted on Netflix, but it's still as timely as ever.
Human Eradication Project 4
The film may not look like a gripping feature film, but that doesn't mean the fourth in the Human Purge Project series, produced by Blumhouse, is less valuable, telling the story of a black community being targeted by a racist government.
As with the rest of the series, director Gerald McMurray depicts the first annual "Great Purge" in the broadest satirical brushstrokes, where all criminal acts are legitimized in the short term — the mysterious New Founding Fathers of the United States who used the Staten Island residential area as an ideal testing ground for experiments. Nya, played by Lex Scott Davis, protested the plan and urged her community not to carry out a cleanup, and the NFFA deliberately incited violence to achieve the results it wanted.
It's a compelling horror thriller, but the first Human Eradication Project is full of creativity and deliberately invoking Trump's image of America. It tells us that when the purge began, the community held a worry-free (i.e., no police) party instead of fighting each other, forcing the NFFA to offer free weapons and monetized incentives to spark violence. As a metaphor, it's blunt, but it resounds its point.
"The Black Party"
In a recent spike Lee film (before the imminent release of Blood Five), he tells the story of Ron Stahlworth, a black cop who broke into Colorado's Klux Klux Klan in the 1970s. He is played in the film by John David Washington, who calls the Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke and signs a contract with a local chapter in an attempt to bring it down with the help of the character played by Adam Dreifer.
It's a quirky story (with some embellishment on screen) that is explored using his usual combination of humor and inflammatory plot. It reveals the tensions of identity — Stahlworth is torn between playing the partner of black American, cop and black activist Patrice Duma (Laura Harrier). If technically, it's a period film, Lee bluntly links it to the contemporary — especially the link between the Ku Klux Klan, the United States under Trump, and several real-life episodes of racist violence — in the final volume of justice and intensity.
Monsters and Men
Raynaldo Marcus Green's debut novel is an elaborately controlled attack that tells the story of an unarmed black man who is killed by a white NYPD police officer. Anthony Ramos in Hamilton filmed the event as a bystander; John David Washington in Black Gangster is a cop struggling with his ambivalent identity; And Kevin Harrison, a kid deeply affected by the shooting and subsequent protests, risked everything to get involved.
It's a well-thought-out, unapologetic filmmaking, and Green weighs the nuances, but never gives up his anger. After the release of the film, Monsters and Men's exploration of under-camera killings, explosive protests, and micro and macro discussions around it all felt very timely.
Now, in the summer of 2020, this is even more true.