Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action, by Nadja Millner-Larsen, University of Chicago Press, 2023. 288 pages.THERE ARE MANY PATHS through the radical arts of the 1960s. Nadja Millner-Larsen’s Up Against the Real: Black Mask from Art to Action takes one back alley and turns it into a bustling boulevard.Her central figure: Ben Morea, artist-activist and acolyte of the Living Theatre and of East Village anarchist Murray Bookchin; member of Aldo Tambellini’s anti-commodification mixed-media Group Center; cofounder of the Neo-Dada provocateurs known as Black Mask (their name likely
Dr. Brenda M. Greene, executive director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, writes about Brooklynite Louise Meriwether, a civil rights movement activist and prolific author and journalist.
For the most part, an “inheritance” left to you by an older relative or loved one is considered a personalized, even intimate, gift. An heirloom, perhaps, or a collection of items, or maybe even a certain amount of money, or a home some sort of one-to-one relationship between the person doing the giving, and the person doing the receiving. And Ephraim Asili’s feature-length debut film “The Inheritance” begins with that setup: a young man inherits a West Philadelphia rowhome left to him by his grandmother. But “The Inheritance” deliberately and thought-provokingly shifts from that singular definition of “inheritance” to a broader, more inclusive one that speaks to generational struggle, collective sacrifice, and the Black American experience. Asili experiments with cinematic form as he considers “inheritance” as legacy, heritage, and tradition, resulting in an engrossing, challenging film that allures and confronts you in equal measure.