Ayoka Chenzira Sidesteps the Hollywood Shuffle

"I get very suspicious about what I see in films," says Ayoka Chenzira. "You don't see movies that look at the grass-root issues of this country. Films that deal with the dreams and aspirations of blacks simply don't get made in Hollywood."

Chenzira should know. She's an independent black filmmaker whose new feature, Alma's Rainbow, is beginning to open doors in Hollywood. February 17, Chenzira hosts a screening of the film at the Drexel Theatre in Bexley as a fundraiser for the National Black Programming Consortium.

She's already scored impressive critical accolades with such short movies as Hairpiece and Zajota and the Boogie Spirit, and has earned the curious distinction of being a prominent "emerging" director — for nearly a decade. With Alma's Rainbow, Chenzira may finally get out of the gate. In fact, she's currently developing a new feature for Paramount Pictures. But she's not uncritical of the process.

"Hollywood chooses its people very carefully. There are people like Julie Dash
(director of Daughters of the Dust) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep and To Sleep With Anger) who are never offered a deal in the Hollywood industry."

Chenzira doesn't say this in anger. These are just the facts, the kind of facts that she knows all too well. She's able to reel off such facts with lightning-fast precision and a straightforward gaze that cuts through you with the cool efficiency of a laser. For some people, she can be as intimidating as a ruler-wielding nun, which may explain why she plays one in Alma's Rainbow. But she's also very funny.

The spine of Alma's Rainbow is about a mother-daughter relationship," she explains. "At first, it appears to be a coming-of-age film about the daughter, but it's really the mother who discovers that she's being anal retentive."

Chenzira's laughter is quick and tinged with a tacit acknowledgment of the personal concerns underlying Alma's Rainbow. She has a 13-year-old daughter (who also appears in the film) and admits that "children generally don't see mothers as people." In part, her movie is an attempt to bridge the inevitable gap that evolves between parent and child.

But the director is also concerned with how people — especially black people — view themselves through media. Film and TV function as a sort of mirror to society, and the media-drenched reflections that people absorb have, in turn, some influence upon their perceptions of themselves. And the reflections that people are seeing in many commercial movies disturbs Chenzira.

"The current trend of what Hollywood calls 'black film making' isn't really about African American culture. The primary interest in Hollywood are movies about urban black pathology — images of young black men playing gangsters. Screenplays that aren't about this aren't getting produced. That's one of the reasons why you don't have many films being released about black women."

Chenzira is concerned about the effect such limited images have upon society, black or white.

"There's a value system in America that's out of whack with reality. These films are emotionally exploitative by concentrating on the violent edges and not on the healing process. And there's a lot of healing that needs to be done in the community."

This healing is part of what Alma's Rainbow is about. It's also what Chenzira hopes to do in Hollywood. But it's very unlikely that she'll give up her independent base in Brooklyn for nothing more than pipe dreams in LaLa Land. This is one filmmaker who's too smart to get lost in the Hollywood shuffle.

Spike Lee's Magical History Tour

Spike Lee is no stranger to controversy. In fact, he willingly pursues it.

His films have repeatedly jabbed into some of the most explosive issues of race relations in America. He also has a fondness for violating political taboos.

Lee loves to simply argue. His career his been clocked by a multitude of professional feuds. But most of all, he likes to engage the audience in debate — real, hard-driven debates about real issues.

No wonder he's so annoying: he wants to make people think.

Lee speaks at Mershon Auditorium May 20 to kick-off "A Weekend of African American Heritage," sponsored by OSU's Student Events committee. As usual with Lee's presentations, ample time for questions and answers with the audience will insure a lively, spontaneous evening.

Lee's first feature film, She's Gotta Have It, was the surprise hit of 1986. The film's ability to draw both white and black viewers paved the way for the current boom of productions by African-American filmmakers.

Lee's shrewd ability to raise production money from Hollywood while retaining
independent control over his films has served as a model for many other black filmmakers. His habit of presenting himself as the self-ordained spokesperson for African-American filmmakers, however, has often encountered resistance from many of his colleagues.

Lee is more of a Hollywood hustler than he might publicly care to admit. He has a drive for merchandising that rivals that of George Lucas and Walt Disney. While his film Malcolm X was attempting to deal with one of the most important political figures in modern America, he was trying to slap an X logo on every piece of fabric he could hawk from coast to coast.

For Lee, the dividing line between politics and advertising has the bouncy flexibility of a pair of Air Jordan's.

There is no denying, however, that he is one of the more gifted and distinctive
figures currently working in the cinema. That is simply a fact. At his best, in such films as Do The Right Thing and Jungle Fever, Lee can deliver an in-your-face argument balanced with a sense of irony and depth that is rarely given due credit. Even in a weak work such as Mo' Better Blues, his command of visual lyricism almost redeems the film's snail-like pace.

But most of all, Lee is a much-needed agitator. Right or wrong, for better or for worse, he stirs debate. In many ways, he is no radical, a fact that he slammed into head first while filming Malcolm X. Some of the most severe criticism of the film has come from African-American intellectuals. Yet Lee is the person who has forced many issues into a broad public forum.

That alone is an achievement.

Sugar Hill

Wesley Snipes is back, and in a black gangster film, so the screen is going to be ablaze in non-stop action, right? Think again homeboys. Does the title Rumble Fish mean anything to ya? In some ways, that’s what Sugar Hill most resembles, and many of ol’ Wesley’s fans may wonder what this half-loopy, left turn to drama is all about.

Snipes plays a drug lord who spends a lot of his time – i.e. the whole movie – brooding. He broods about his mother, who OD’ed in front of him when he was a kid. He worries about his addict father (Clarence Williams III), who’s wasting away because of drugs and bitter memories. He’s frustrated with his brother (Michael Wright), who’s become his hot-headed business partner on the streets. He’s concerned about the impending gang war that the mob is provoking and the strain it’s placing on his oddly personal relationship with his Mafia connection (Abe Vigoda). Last but not least, he’s confused about his deepening feelings for Theresa Randle.

But what Snipes should be worried about is the fact that Sugar Hill doesn’t go any place. It’s nice to see Snipes handling a major dramatic role; he has a greater range than he’s given credit for, and his performance always contain an edgy quality that’s captivating. But Sugar Hill only allows him to look worn out and serious. Even the almost embarrassing conclusion of this movie – in which the Oedipus complex goes for an odd-ball triple hitter – doesn’t give Snipes any emoting room to act in. Besides, the two-part ending simply confuses all of the movie’s issues, instead of resolving them.

So, what is Snipes doing in this thing? At this very moment, he may be asking his agent that very question.

Haile Gerima Returns to the Roots

“As a child, I liked Tarzan movies and John Wayne,” said Haile Gerima, an African filmmaker who's worked primarily in the United States – and who has become accustomed to the ironies inherent in living within two very different worlds.

“But it's like playing cowboys and Indians. You always want to be the cowboy and never the Indian. That's how much the colonizer makes you hate your own culture.”

The need to remember, and review, a dispossessed culture is at the heart of Gerima's latest movie, Sankofa. The film's harsh and vivid depiction of the 19th-century slave trade has garnered international praise, while earning it the dubious distinction of being a movie that no U.S. Distributor wanted to handle. Gerima screens Sankofa at the Drexel Theatre April 21 as a special presentation for the National Black Programming Consortium.

The title Sankofa is a word from the Akan language that means “to return to the past in order to go forward.” That process takes place in the story when an African-American fashion model travels to a shoot in an old fortress in Ghana, only to find herself reliving an earlier life on a Caribbean slave plantation. The experience is a nightmare of beatings, rape and torture. It is also her critical first step toward rediscovering her own heritage.

“Part of the struggle is in reclaiming the past,” Germina explained by phone from his distribution office in New York. “Slavery was about disconnecting black people from their link to Africa. Slavery was a great negation, and the bridges to the past were cut off.”

Gerima's own life reads like a bridge between the two continents. Born in Ethiopia in 1946, Gerima grew up in an intellectual family, which influenced his early interest in theater – his father was a prominent African playwright. Gerima arrived in America in 1967 and began studying at Chicago's Goodman School of Drama. “But one day I stumbled into the wrong building,” he joked, “and saw a screening of student films.” He became fascinated with cinema and made tracks for the film department at UCLA.

He quickly became a favorite on the film festival circuit, with such works as the documentary Harvest: 3000 Years as well as the drama Bush Mama, a realistic look at life in central Los Angeles. For the past 17 years, Gerima has lived in Washington, D.C., where he teaches at Howard University. But film making is his real passion. “Every movie is another step in an imperfect journey toward expressing myself.”

Gerima may view his own work as flawed, but his view of Hollywood is much harsher. He describes it as “a brutal mind-set for black intellectuals.” He's not fond of such Hollywood forms of black film making as Menace II Society.

“Every 10 or 15 years there's a new round of these types of movies,” he explained. “But to take a small section of young people and exploit them with these films is simply a form of racism.”

Given his outlook on Hollywood, Gerima wasn't completely surprised by American movie companies' strong resistance to Sankofa, a response that convinced him to handle the film's distribution himself.

Which is fine with him, if it allows him to control the perspectives on African-American history and experience expressed in his films. For Gerima, the important battleground is the media-created images of one's people.

“African-Americans don't control films, TV, the banks that finance these things or anything else. But African-Americans are trying to take control. You can see that struggle taking place every day.”

Fear of a Black Hat

Rap may indeed be the music of modern urban rebellion. It's also the boom-box harbinger of fast-buck fashion, pseudo macho posturing and crotch-grabbing misogyny.

But most of all, rap music is often guilty of being more style than substance – its hostile sense of social defiance often bends under the enormous weight of its performers' gold-plated jewelry.

The whole scene is primed more for parody than revolution, which is what the comedy Fear of a Black Hat does with relative ease and effectiveness.

Overtly modeled on the rock spoof This Is Spinal Tap, Fear of the Black Hat is a faux documentary about a year in the career of the rap group N.W.H. (Niggaz With Hats). They're an odd mix of pop radical attitudes, inner city bravado, half-baked pretensions and Dr. Seuss-derived headgear.

N.W.H. violently opposes censorship (unless threatened with arrest), oppression by the white man (well, actually, they're really against their ex-manager, who's name was White) and gun control. They spend most of their time in violent backstage shoot-outs against rival rap group the Jam Boys.

Writer-director Rusty Cundieff plays Ice Cold, the closest thing the group has to a leader. The only problem is, neither Tone Def (Mark Christopher Lawrence) or Tasty-Taste (Larry B. Scott) want a leader. Whether or not they want a leader, they certainly need a road manager who's better at ducking bullets than the last five guys who had the job.

Any parody of a single subject starts to drag after awhile, but for the most part, Fear of a Black Hat is a sly and hysterical treat that lampoons several ripe targets.

Crooklyn

Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to mind your own business. Take Crooklyn, for example. With this, his latest film, a surprisingly mellow Spike Lee makes a sentimental journey back to his old neighborhood circa 1970 – a trip filtered through the innocence and malleability of children, as they grapple with the high anxiety of the adult world. Crooklyn is a slow, subtle and often rewarding movie.

According to Time magazine, however, Lee’s trying to set a social agenda for black filmmakers.

Say what? Even Lee has given up on the idea that he can set any kind of an agenda for anyone else. Besides, if the over-the-hill white boys at Time want to blame somebody for introducing a social agenda into the African-American cinema (as if this were a unique idea), then they should take that issue to Charles Burnett (director of To Sleep With Anger). Lee himself has acknowledged Burnett’s influence on black film making, and in some ways, Crooklyn plays like an extended homage from Lee to Burnett.

Crooklyn is a will-o’-wisp of a movie held together by the slim but tender plot thread of a middle-class Brooklyn family that’s desperately holding on to its economic foothold, while the musician father (Delroy Lindo) takes a slippery gamble in the pursuit of pure music. The family’s held together by the sheer, harsh and often embittered tenacity of the mother (Alfre Woodard in the best role of her career). She frequently comes across as a shrew, but her love for her family extends even beyond death.

At its best, Crooklyn possesses a sense of emotional intimacy and an authentic feel for its place and time that makes it a joy to watch. Despite a few false steps, Crooklyn is a good slice-of-life study.