Posts Tagged ‘realtalk’

American Skin DAYUM!!!

American Skin.. Where do I start? Sadly there may be spoilers going forward. American Skin is a film about a father trying to adjust after the death of his son a year earlier. The film starts with a car being pulled over by the cops and a small interaction incurs between the officers, the driver and his 14-year-old son. Things escalate very quickly and the child was killed by the officer.

The film is done in a documentary fashion as it tries to build up the events leading to that horrible event.The father is met by a young man that wants to document, the aftermath and events leading up to and after the trial of the officer that killed the child. Things take a turn when the officer is acquitted of all charges.

This all leads to the father taking things into his own hands with several military friends. They easily overtook a precinct and take several officers and civilians hostage. The reason for this was to hold a trial which would determine the officer’s innocence or guilt of killing the child. I will leave it at as you will need to watch the film to fill in the holes I have left.

This is a brilliant film and echos the horror of what most people of colour face daily, when it relates to them or their children. I once held that fear for myself and now I hold that fear for my son and what I would do if the justice system failed. From my perspective, it is simply not just a matter of fairness it is a matter of humanity. Enjoy the film, possibly cry but do try to understand the message.

Black Panther A dream from my inner child

Black panther as a comic character turn film means so much in many ways to many individuals, especially children and individuals who live in the world of imagination and wonder. As a child I would have loved to have seen a character that I could image and wonder about being. As an animator, a game designer and creator of visual worlds this hold a wonderful place in heart. Long have we searched for that superhero we could relate to. The film represented many things, it showed a unified collective of various cultures, It showed a fictional near utopia region in the continent of Africa not drained of its resources by colonizers. It showed what Africa could one day become and what we only dream may happen. It showed the beauty of what we would yearned they would show case of Africa many locations and nations. Personally I was sick of seeing the slave stories as if that was all we had to tell of our past, we did not start as slaves our origins stemmed from much further back. Many want to stop at Egypt as if that was the dawn of man and mainly African. Egypt barely touched the surface of what and where we came from and what we could be. I look at Egypt and think oh more middle eastern influence.
What I took away from the film was the awe of seeing strong Black Women, who were not afraid to embrace their natural beauty, some don Afros, natural hair style or some simply had no hair, they were not presented as sex objects or prizes that we are seen time and time again but mighty warriors who did not require the protection of a man but was respected as a equal. Having a younger sister who is practically the athletic prodigy in the family who does not needs a man to protect her, she seeks her equal to stand by her. This was our starwars, startrek, our harry potter at the end of the day it does matter who created the character, it just gives the children of tomorrow an image of hope that we do exist even in fantasy, that we have brilliance. This film shows a culture that we so longingly wanted and had lost our connection to. We now have a super hero who is not batman, superman or spiderman but so much more he is a king of a nation. Beyond that there are strong women, noble men, monarchs, of more than one tribe.

Growing up in Jamaica, I saw so much culture so much of unity. Our motto out of many one people. Has a meaning that we are a nation of many different groups of people, you will find a chinese, japanese, white, indian all sort of jamaicans. Mind you each group had their own form of unity and devide at the end we were still all jamaicans.

This film also shows how we as the lost children of Africa felt which was abandoned, alone without a base culture, we were stripped of anything that connected us to mother Africa by our colonizers. In a sense this was us hoping for such a future, this was us not being a people who were stolen from that shithole Continent but from somewhere greater even again if it a fictitious place called Wakanda. The question is how did we become a shithole Continent. Thank you Colonizer, don’t you worry the descendants from those shithole countries will not forget that statement and hopefully we will try to make our base-nation better. If you love the score snag it from amazon or google, note the score is not the same thing as the soundtrack.

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