The Rise Of Indie Black Cinema

Independent black cinema has always been around. From Melvin Van Peebles (Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song) to Spike Lee (She’s Gotta Have It) to Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou), black filmmakers have used limited resources and small budgets to explore the beauty and struggle of African-American life in a variety of contexts (I should also mention Clement Virgo our side of the border and his film Rude). Here are two independent films from this year that cross the very broad spectrum of the black experience.

Precious

Thanks to the critical and financial success of Precious, there’s now a bigger market for stories about poor black urban life to reach a wider audience. Precious’ success is somewhat of a problem for me, however, because despite its noble intentions, it relies too heavily on black stereotypes and cliché’s to really be an effective critique of African-American life. The film’s heroine, Precious, is overweight, dark-skinned, illiterate, and exceedingly poor. She’s pregnant with her second child (after being raped by her own father), is tormented by her sadistic mother (Mo’Nique), and taunted at school and in her neighbourhood. She lucks out by being accepted into an alternative school, Each One Teach One, and with the help of a sympathetic teacher (Paula Patton), and social worker (Mariah Carey), manages to turn her life around, somewhat.

I liked Precious a lot after I left the theatre, I think because of the strength of the performances, particularly from Mo’Nique. Her character’s monologue at the end of the film is the most powerful I’ve ever seen, and the movie ends on such a high note that you almost forget the weaknesses. As I said, it relies heavily on black stereotypes. Mo’Nique’s character is like a nightmare welfare queen, no doubt the kind Ronald Reagen warned about. She eats pig’s feet and smokes menthol cigarettes. Precious even steals a bucket of fried chicken at one point. Oh, and all the “good” black characters in the film are light-skinned. Why is that? The film labours to show how low Precious’ self-esteem is, injecting brief fantasy sequences where Precious sees herself as a famous model with a light-skinned boyfriend. She even looks in the mirror at one point and sees a white girl in the reflection. Had the producers cast a dark-skinned actress as her teacher or the social worker, it might make sense why at the end of the film she starts to accept what she looks like, but having those parts played by light-skinned actors seems to only reinforce her earlier perceptions. Still, Precious has such strong performances and a moving story that you can sort of cheer for it despite its flaws.

Medicine For Melancholy

I’ve been waiting for a film like Medicine For Melancholy for a while now. We’ve seen a slew of films about white folk being introspective; it’s our turn now.

Medicine For Melancholy is kind of the black answer to films like Eternal Sunshine For The Spotless Mind and Before Sunrise, a smart love story told in the span of one day.

Micha (Wyatt Cenac) and Joanna (Tracey Heggins) are strangers who wake up from a one-night stand at a mutual friend’s house in San Francisco. Micah tries to strike up a conversation with Jo’ during breakfast, but it’s clear she doesn’t want to partake in any small talk. They share a cab ride home, and she leaves before Micah can get her phone number. Fortunately for him, she leaves her wallet in the cab, and he manages to track her down. Upon arriving at her residence, however, he learns she’s living with a boyfriend who happens to be out of town. Despite her initial hesitation, she finally agrees to hang out with him.

It’s from this point that the film heads into familiar rom-com territory. They ride their bikes around the city, hang out at a museum, they even go on a merry-go-round. It’s a great first date, but there’s a problem: they both know it won’t go anywhere. “It is what it is,” Micah tells her.

First-time director Barry Jenkins makes good use of San Francisco’s landscape and culture to explore the relationship of his two leads, as well as comment on the growing gentrification of the city, which the film observes, is pushing all the poor and working-class people out, leaving it only for the upper-middle class, who also happen to be predominantly white.

There's so much to love about Medicine For Melancholy. Senac and Heggins have terrific chemistry on-screen. And there’s not a whole lot of dialog, unusual for a romantic film of this calibre, which almost always tread toward heavy amounts of talking. Instead we’re treated to a lot of quiet moments, like watching Micah and Jo’ sit in a museum of African-American history listening to an actor relate the slave experience.

Had this movie just been about the romance, it would have been okay, but Jenkins wisely chose to explore the complexity of being a minority within a minority. Both characters are black hipsters (or indie as they call themselves). Jo’ is dating a white guy, and Micah has just broken up with a white girl. Micah observes that in a city with only a 7 percent black population, maybe 1 percent would describe themselves as “indie.” And usually that 1 percent is going out with a white person. Jo’ accuses him of only seeing things in terms of race. “So we should be together because we’re black?” Maybe not, but why not?

I think the film does a good job of exploring the complexity of being black middle-class, of trying to find someone that shares your experience. Black people aren’t all the same obviously, but there’s a collective experience of being “the other,” of being the only person of colour in a room full of white folks, that makes it easier to relate to one another. Could either Jo’ or Micah have taken a white person to an exhibition on slavery at MOMA? Maybe, but would it have the same meaning? Probably not.

Medicine For Melancholy is one of the best films I’ve seen all year. It shows a side of the black experience that we’ve never really seen before, and it does it without preaching or resorting to cliché’s or stereotypes. At one point Jo’ asks Micah “what do black people do on a Sunday?” Hopefully, they’ll watch this movie.