What to watch on Netflix — Exploring Black Cinema (Part 1)
Film is and has always been a very powerful medium. Whether in a dark room with strangers or from the comfort of your sofa, film has the power to control our emotions. It can make us roar with laughter or break out in tears, but most importantly, it allows us to escape our egocentric lives for 90 minutes and see the world from someone else’s perspective.
In the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement that has spread around the world this year, seeing the world from other people’s perspectives is more important than ever. While most of us will never understand what it means to be Black in America or in any country for that matter, what we can do is watch and support the films of black creatives whose voices bring those experiences to light and raise awareness about the harsh inequalities and injustices they face. Therefore this month I have curated a list of films on Netflix by black directors from all around the world.
While Netflix has also created their own Black Lives Matter playlist, they don’t really curate or give any context around their suggestions so I thought it might help if I highlight some of the gems. I’ve also tried to strike a balance between bringing attention to films dealing with topical issues and keeping my list broad enough so there is enough genre variety for every viewing occasion.
Hopefully by putting a spotlight on these talented voices you can see the world through their eyes and at the same time you can support greater black representation in film. As you all know Netflix greenlights movies based on streaming numbers so your eyeballs on these director’s films will help them get their future films made and it will give a platform for their voices which might otherwise go unheard.
Part 1 — Directors already ontop of their game
Ryan Coogler — Fruitvale Station
By now I‘d be surprised if you haven’t heard of Ryan Coogler… known for Black Panther and the Creed films he’s definitely established himself as one of the most successful working directors right now. Keep a look out for him as he is working on a Black Panther sequel and a Space Jam remake!
Looking back to before his trajectory into stardom, he made a tragic yet powerful film called ‘Fruitvale Station’. Based on a true story and set over the course of one 24 hour period, it stars his now regular Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant, a young black man in Oakland trying to live a clean life and get by with his family before a tragic encounter with police one New Years eve at Fruitvale Station.
The film tackles salient issues such as the impact of the war on drugs on black communities in America, the difficulty of being reintegrated into society after prison, but most importantly it paints a harrowing picture about the reality of police brutality in America. Of all the films currently on Netflix in the UK this one is the most relevant to the Black Lives Matter movement. It takes one man and his family and looks at how despite his best efforts to live a clean life, he can’t escape the systemic racism and brutality embedded in the police system.
John Singleton — Boyz N Da Hood
If you haven’t heard of John Singleton you either don’t know, don’t show or don’t care about film! …keep reading if that reference didn’t make sense.
But seriously, John Singleton has done some amazing things in film. With his feature film debut Boyz N Da Hood he was not only the first black director to be nominated for Best Director in the Academy Awards but also the youngest director to be nominated for that category! Take that Chazelle!
On top of that without John Singleton no one would remember the Fast & Furious films… there wouldn’t even have been a franchise! After the success of the first film back in 2001, Vin Diesel didn’t have the heart to commit to more films and quickly moved on to The Chronicles of Riddick. Even the director of the first film Rob Cohen decided to move onto other projects. Then came John Singleton into the picture and he managed to steer the films away from being Vin Diesel star vehicles and introduced a powerful ensemble cast.
Now back to the film that kick-started his career. Boyz N Da Hood is a coming-of-age drama that starts in the summer of 1984 in South Central LA. After a fight at school Tre Styles is sent to live with his father at the other side of town, here he makes lifelong friends with neighbours Doughboy, Ricky and Chris and has all sorts of adventures — think ‘Stand by Me’ but set in South Central — however sooner or later they are forced to grow up before their time with Chris and Ricky being arrested and sent off to juvi for a petty crime.
The film then picks up 7 years later in 1991 in their last year of high school as they are figuring out what to do with the rest of their lives. Ricky (Morris Chestnut) is a star athlete with a ticket to a good college, Tre (Cuba Gooding Jr) influenced by his great role model father (Laurence Fishburne) wants to make something of himself, while Doughboy and Chris are just making do with the best they’ve got. Sooner or later the realities of what it means to be a boy in da hood kick in and their lives are changed forever. The film starts with the title cards giving the sad figures that “1 in 20 Black American males will be murdered in their life” and ends on some biting lines by Doughboy, “Either they don’t know, don’t show, or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood”
Steve McQueen — 12 Years a Slave
Our very own Londoner, Steve Mcqueen has been making visceral films for the best part of three decades. He made his start with arthouse short films that had strong French New Wave influences before making his feature debut in ‘Hunger’ (2008) starring Fassbender in a breakout performance about the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. For his sophmore feature he once again worked with Fassbender on ‘Shame’ (2011) this time addressing sex addiction. With 12 Years a Slave he really broke new ground and created a masterpiece.
What’s so surprising about ’12 Years a Slave’ is not how beautifully crafted the film is nor how amazing the acting is (those are widely accepted… come on, it won best picture!)… but rather how lonely it stands in the repertoire of films that depict slavery in the US.
When this film came out, you could probably count the number of films about slavery on your hands, when you add to that films about slavery directed by black directors, the number whittles down even further. With ’12 Years a Slave’ Steve McQueen not only managed to tell a story that needed to be told, he also made a masterpiece that stands alongside the greats of film history.
Based on the 19th-century memoir of Solomon Northup, ’12 Years a Slave’ follows Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) an educated carpenter, musician and family man from New York state who, in 1841, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Stripped of his past, identity and humanity he first becomes the property of relatively benign plantation owner Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) however, after getting on the wrong side of a sadistic farmhand working for Ford, Solomon is sold down the river to Epps (Michael Fassbender), a psychotic slave-owner with an uncontrollable temper and appetite for cruelty.
The film has an all-star cast with leads Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong’o delivering powerful performances. These are really accented through the long lasting close ups that linger on their faces much longer than audiences are comfortable with, especially in moments of cruelty. McQueen masterfully depicted these scenes by drawing them out and making them very graphic in order for the audience to be fully immersed in the inhumanity.
The supporting roles of Cumberbatch and Fassbender also do a great job at portraying the subtleties of the master-slave relationship. It’s easy to make slave owners into caricatures however it’s more difficult to dig deep into their motivations in order to craft believable individuals and then subvert our expectations to underline the dehumanising aspects of the entire institution.
Dee Rees — Mudbound
Dee Rees is criminally unknown and unrewarded for the number of powerful films she has directed in her still early career. Starting off with Pariah which is based on her short about a black teenager embracing her identity as a lesbian, followed by Bessie a thoughtful and stirring biopic about the blues singer Bessie Smith starring Queen Latifah in the titular role. Mudbound is Dee Rees’ third feature and explores the Jim Crow era South through the lens of two farming families one black (The Jackson’s,) and one white (The McAllan’s), living side by side in rural Mississippi and how their lives intersect in this era of segregation.
The reality of the time meant that these two families had very little chance of really getting to express their inner lives to each other. The director’s choice to narrate the film through a series of interior monologues that alternate between the characters sets up a powerful dramatic structure where we are really able to understand the implications of each of their actions and the changes they go through as their lives are brought together.
Thematically the film does a good job at showing the evolving nature of racism across the different McAllan generations. While the grandfather is a self-righteous, bigoted and staunchly racist KKK member, his oldest son Henry has clearly had some of those views rubbed off on him particularly through the sense of entitlement he projects on the Jackson’s and how he constantly interrupts their intimate moments ordering them to do things for him. On the other hand his wife Laura and his young brother Jamie are presented as the hope of the next generation. They treat the Jackson’s with dignity and respect and form strong bonds with them.
While the choice to have the film begin where it ends seems to suggest that while time has gone by, things are still the same and a lot of that entrenched racism is still prevalent. Dee Rees does offer a glimmer of hope through the bond between Laura and Florence and Jamie and Ransel. Also the fact that “the beginning is the end” point is the burial of the racist grandfather is another key motif suggesting that hopefully this type of hatred can die off with that generation.
Overall this is a powerful film and in my opinion one of the best narrative feature films Netflix has made and I hope Dee Rees continues to make great films such as Mudbound.
13th — Ava DuVernay
If there is one film on this list you should watch then it’s surely ‘The 13th’ a powerful documentary by Ava DuVernay. Beginning with a powerful quote by Obama about how the US has 5 per cent of the world’s population but 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners the film then goes on to address how the 13th amendment which ended slavery also contained the seed that allowed it to perpetuate slave-like institutions such as the prison-industrial complex to this very day.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The film argues that by abolishing slavery except as punishment for crime allowed post-Civil War racist legislation to be passed that created severe sentences for minor crimes and in effect resulting in slave-like convict labour and the disenfranchisement of large portions of the Black American population (felons in most states to this day permanently lose their right to vote). In addition after the Civil Rights movement restored these rights, Republicans sought to win over white conservatives through the War on Drugs which perpetuated mass incarceration for petty crimes that disproportionately affected Black Americans.
This system then became engrained through the prison-industrial complex where private prisons were created to meet the growing supply of incarcerations and which depended on being kept full to maximise their profitability. The whole system was then perpetuated by interest groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council which was funded by private companies and whose job was to draft legislation backed by private interests and get them signed by legislators.
The film does a great job at walking you through the economic history of slavery and the post-Civil War legislation and practices that replaced it and really gives great context to what is happening to this day.
“If you dismiss black complaints about mistreatment by the police as being completely rooted in our modern context then you’re missing the point completely. There has never been a period in our history where the law and order branch of the state has not operated against the freedoms, the liberties, the options, the choices that have been available for the black community. And to ignore that racial heritage, to ignore that historical context means that you can’t have an informed debate about the current state of blacks and police relationship today. This didn’t just appear out of nothing, this is the product of a centuries-long historical process and to not reckon with that is to shut off solutions.”
Antoine Fuqua — Training Day
While Antoine Fuqua is known for his big budget action films such as the Equaliser films, Olympus Has Fallen and The Shooter, Training Day still remains his masterpiece.
Taking place over the course of one day in LA, Officer Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) is a rookie on his first day of training to become a narcotics detective, he is wide-eyed and hungry to make a difference. He is assigned to shadow Detective Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington), a crooked cop who pressures Hoyt into more and more corrupt tactics as the day goes on.
While there are plenty of films that look at police corruption, my favourite being Sidney Lumet’s ‘Serpico’, most of these other films show how one good cop can make a difference and change the system. At the same time, ‘Training Day’ gives a much more pessimistic picture about the whole system, about how it goes too far deep for any one cop to dismantle and how it’s impossible to be the one good cop, when the whole system conspires to make you complicit. This is much closer to the truth. Just look at what happened to the scandal the film was based on.
The film is partly based on the Rampart Scandal in the CRASH unit of the LAPD in the 1990s which exposed widespread police corruption within the unit, including involvement in murders, robberies, police brutality, evidence planting, and participating in gang activity. More than 70 police officers either assigned to or associated with the Rampart CRASH unit were implicated in some form of misconduct, making it one of the most widespread cases of documented police corruption in U.S. history.
Now bear with me… Of those 70 officers, enough evidence was found to bring 58 before an internal administrative board. However, only 24 were actually found to have committed any wrongdoing, with twelve given suspensions of various lengths, seven forced into resignation or retirement, and ONLY five terminated. As a result of the probe into falsified evidence and police perjury, 106 prior criminal convictions were overturned. The scandal resulted in more than 140 civil lawsuits against the city of LA, costing the city an estimated $125 million in settlements.
While this film only deals with one particular instance of what was happening throughout the RAMPART scandal, it is also a very well told story that really immerses you into crime and police corruption in LA around the turn of the century.
Spike Lee — She’s Gotta Have It
Spike Lee’s first feature film is a light-hearted indie rom-com and definitely a great intro to the master’s work! Nora Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) can’t decide what kind of man she wants to date, so she decides to date three at the same time. The first is Greer Childs (John Canada Terrell), a rich, handsome narcissist. Then there’s Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks), a stable, overprotective alpha male. Finally, there’s Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee), a timid geek with a heart of gold. Unfortunately, while each suitor has his virtues, Darling just can’t seem to make up her mind. In her words “It’s about control, my body, my mind” and none of them seem to be able to offer her that.
Filmed just after graduating from film school you can see a strong arthouse influence on every shot, some scenes belong frame for frame in a photography exhibit. Even the narration isn’t what audiences would have been used to at the time, as most of the film involves interviews with key characters candidly talking to the camera about what they think of Nola. There is also a surprising musical interlude in the middle of the film that gives the false hope that one of them may be close to winning however not before all the fun twists and turns in the second half as Nola keeps testing them all.
It’s a shame Netflix doesn’t have many more Spike Lee films in the UK but if you wanted to go deeper into his work make sure to make ‘Do the Right Thing’ and ‘Blackkklansman’ the next two on your list.
Other Established Directors to Check out on Netflix
While the films above highlight directors who have combined artistry, storytelling and strong message to make powerfully resonant works, there are still other black directors you should also check out whose films might have been a bit more commercial with less powerful messages but nonetheless still very entertaining — it all depends on what you are looking to watch. If you like more action/crime dramas like Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day make sure to check out some of films of F. Gary Gray, Netflix has a whole bunch of his films:
‘A Man Apart’ (2003) — Vigilante action film starring Vin Diesel about a man getting revenge on a Mexican Drug Lord Diablo after his wife is murdered.
‘Law Abiding Citizen’ (2009) — Vigilante action film starring Gerald Butler and Jamie Foxx and again about a man trying to get revenge for the killing of his family.
‘Straight Outta Compton’ (2015) — Biopic depicting the rise and fall of the groundbreaking hip-hop group NWA and its members Easy-E, Ice Cube and Dr Dre.
For something more lighthearted F. Gary Gray also has the classic stoner comedy ‘Friday’ (1995) about two friends in South Central, LA and all shennanigans they get themselves into over the course of one Friday.
Until now I’ve focused purely on films by established directors you might already know, in the next few week I will come back with Part 2 which will look at up-and-coming black indie directors who I hope you will hear about more over the next few years.
Finally, while I’ve kept my selections to films currently on Netflix and I’ve tried to highlight films from various genres, settings, and time periods — there are still many many other great films by black directors to check out. So if you are moved by watching these films and want some more recommendations don’t hesitate to reach out and I can give you a more in depth watch list! Although it would mean going out of the Netflix comfort zone…
