Black Harvest International Film and Video Festival
Roberto Bangura’s 1997 first feature captures the turmoil of adolescence and the social chaos of Britain in the early 70s. Thirteen-year-old Jacqueline (Joanna Ward) lives with her abusive white mother but has never known her black father; an excellent runner, she’s pushed to excel by a sympathetic coach, who says her brains are in her feet. A busy camera and intrusive rock tunes convey Jack’s unstable sense of herself–full of contradictions, she takes cigarette breaks during her runs–but when her mother turns soft and cuddly, I was incredulous. (FC) (4:00)
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The real find on this program of four shorts is Pretty and the Wolf, a wicked variation on the Little Red Riding Hood tale directed with great verve by Bruce Rory Thomas. It’s set to a half-forgotten musical monologue recorded by Duke Ellington, who was a feminist long before the term became popular. E.J. Lockett’s Endangered Species (1997) takes place in a futuristic nation ruled by white supremacists; a group of nonwhites hides in an underground tunnel, the gloomy black-and-white cinematography reinforcing a fatalism that finally gives way to Technicolor as the hero’s orphaned child reaches the island paradise his father had only dreamed about. Shawn Batey’s Hair-tage (1997) is an engaging valentine to dreadlocks, an emblem of black heritage. The only dud is Rahdi Taylor’s Blue Note (1998), in which four black youths in LA are suspected of killing a homeless white man. The story climaxes with a protest against the boys’ accuser, but the murky visuals, slack pacing, and pedestrian direction dull the film’s edge. (TS) (6:00)
SUNDAY, AUGUST 22
THURSDAY, AUGUST 26
