Two Souls at the Acapulco Black Film Festival

by Esther Iverem
SeeingBlack.com Editor and Film Critic

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ACAPULCO, Mexico—If the Acapulco Black Film Festival ever decides to re-name itself, it might try the Two Souls Black Film Festival. For nothing better than W.E.B. Du Bois' famous description of the African American condition—"two warring ideals in one"—better sums up the state of the Black film community on the fifth anniversary of this gathering.

On one hand, many Black filmmakers want the wide distribution and big-bucks promotion that Hollywood studios can provide. At a panel titled "Black Hollywood 2000," established directors like John Singleton, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reginald Hudlin told an often fawning audience how they have made it. (Even if "making it" for Hudlin means directing the likes of Ladies Man.)

Coca-Cola Film Score Competition winner
Malcolm Rector (center), with Isaac Hayes (left) and Coca Cola's Caroleen Robinson.

On the other hand, with such studio deals few and far in between—no major studios show up here, for example, to shop for films they way they do at Cannes or Sundance—the movement is continuing to build for an alternative distribution network to handle independent Black films that never make it to your theater. The big news this year is the formation by Jeff Friday, co-founder of this festival, of Film Life, which will provide theatrical distribution for independent Black films. Film Life's first release on October 5 will be last year's big film festival winner, the powerful drama, One Week, directed by Carl Seaton.

"We want to release classic films—the way Cooley High was a classic," says Friday. "We know there is a market for these films. When the studios are ready to do a 'Black film,' they're looking for the widest audience possible. They don't know our culture."

Last year, Friday kicked off BlackFilmFestAmerica, a fledgling tour of Black independent films that visited a few cities but suffered from poor promotion. He said that Film Life will invest $1 million to promote One Week and, taking a cue from music promoters, will use Black radio and street promotion to get the word out.

Films in the Hood

As for the movies, let's just say that the 'hood film is back with a vengeance. In addition to providing a sneak peek at John Singleton's upcoming Baby Boy, the festival offered three films in its U.S. competition—Blue Hill Avenue, Lockdown and Lift—that dealt to varying degrees with crime, drugs, violence and murder. Blue Hill Avenue, which had its world premiere here and chronicles the rise of a group of drug dealers in Boston, won the audience award over the other two, and also won over A Huey P. Newton Story, starring Roger Guenveur Smith and directed by Spike Lee.

Love Come Down, while not exactly ghetto but dealing with drugs, race and family conflict, was inexplicably voted by the audience as best International film over Raoul Peck's powerful epic Lumumba. A story about the consequences of crime, Jacked, was considered the best work-in-progress over three others, including Voice of the Voiceless, Tania Cuevas-Martinez's worthy documentary about death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. Saving the day and, as far as I'm concerned, saving the reputation of the festival, was the selection by attending filmmakers of Lumumba as best film.

Something else: Lumumba and Huey P. Newton

Lumumba is one of two festival films being widely distributed to the general public this month. It is a powerful and important film that seeks, with some difficulty, to tell the heinous story behind the rise and execution of Patrice Lumumba, the freedom fighter and first leader of newly independent country of Zaire. The documented complexity of what happened in the Congo—including chaos among the country's soldiers, intervention by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the presence of more than 400 foreign correspondents—means that it is challenging to tell an all-encompassing story in two hours. Complete books have been written, for example, focusing on solely the United States' role or the experience of the men who ultimately cut up and burned Lumumba's corpse.

Featuring a brilliant performance by Eriq Ebouaney, the film-in wide release on June 27—makes important contribution to understanding what Lumumba saw and experienced in his short tenure as leader before his murder. While the film's finale is its strength, its beginning is its weakness. There is no narrative—not even a flashback—about Lumumba's formative years. We are given no clue about the influences-familial, social or educational-that shaped him into an important thinker about African independence. There is another gap in explanation when Lumumba arrives in the capital as a postal employee, winds up selling beer and then makes the seemingly sudden transformation into a political leader.

Finally, while depicting the heat of political combat, it seems as though it was easier for Peck to dramatize the brutality toward Whites by the country's Black soldiers than it was to dramatize the cumulative effects of colonialism on the Congolese people, or the plotting and scheming by Whites against the young nation and leader. Despite such flaws, Lumumba is the must-see Black film of 2001.

Also, premiering June 18 on Black Starz and also showing on PBS and the African American Heritage Network is A Huey P. Newton Story, starring Roger Guenveur Smith and directed by Spike Lee. In Smith's veteran and imaginative hands, Newton—the Panther's minister of defense—is drawn in warm relief. There is no beret, or rounds of ammunition slung over his shoulder. He is dressed simply in a black shirt, pants and shoes, sitting in a chair on an otherwise bare stage. The set represents the Oakland high-rise apartment where Newton lived in the later years of his life. It is from this position that he ruminates on his life, all the while nervously bouncing his right leg and chain-smoking Kools.

Smith uses humor and references to current events to make Newton just a regular guy with a few physical ticks and dependencies. He becomes a Black Panther around-the-way brother, the youngest of seven children, the one who was a slow learner, the one who hated to be teased with chants of "Baby Huey."

This production has evolved considerably since its beginning in 1996. Now Newton refers to the 1997 murder of the Notorious B.I.G and calls the Oval Office the "Oral Office." Both comments are references to events that occurred well after Newton's 1989 shooting death on an Oakland street, after an alleged drug-related altercation. This version of Smith's performance downplays the original play's emphasis on Newton as a drug user. The result, you could say, is a more "positive" portrayal of Newton but "positive" isn't really the right word. Here is a painful and complex humanity.

Historic footage and photographs break up the visual monotony of the bare set, though they cannot fully save it from its slow moments. It is almost inevitable, despite Smith's significant acting feat, that the minimal action will be cause for squirming—especially when viewed on a small screen. Thankfully, the challenge of filming one man sitting does not overwhelm the power or substance of this important interpretation of 60's history.

DuBois would be proud.

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-- June 21, 2001

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