From Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in spy comedy Mr and Mrs Smith to Juliette Binoche in fashion world drama The New Look – and the final run of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Darnell Martin, the director of
I Like It Like That (1994), the first Hollywood studio vehicle piloted by a Black woman, recently said this of the withering of the previous Black film heyday of
Do the Right Thing (1989) and
Daughters of the Dust (1991): “It’s like they set us up to fail.” If the 21st-century FOIA film has its way, being set up to fail by shadowy forces will become a productive artistic subject perhaps the primary inspiration, in fact, for backward-glancing Black cinema as our post-civil rights era topples and rebuilds the monuments of 20th-century Black culture.
What is a FOIA film, anyway? It’s a film that could only be made after (1) the liberating provisions of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) were extended to once-secret FBI documents; and after (2) those documents, exposed to public view, have been redefined as master keys to the interaction of modern Black life and the American racial state. It’s a film, then, like Sam Pollard’s
David Oyelowo: I don t want to be a cog in a wheel I d rather own the whole bicycle nme.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nme.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.