Read Jason Solomons in Guardian filmblog.
'This week I meet Kasi Lemmons, director of the startling Talk to Me, about African American 'shock jock' Petey Green. Could a white man have told this tale?
Talk To Me is one of the most enjoyable films I've seen all year. It's breezy, funky fun because of the two terrific performances of Don Cheadle and our own Chiwetel Ejiofor and because the music and milieu feel genuine and heartfelt.
The story of radio DJ Petey Green, set in late 60s Washington DC and featuring scenes around the killing of Martin Luther King - but I venture that its authenticity really stems from the film being directed by a black woman, Kasi Lemmons '
Read on here.
Showing posts with label black/white. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black/white. Show all posts
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
Superstition
One inspiring book which I picked up on the Charing Cross Road in 1989 and return to time and again is 'The Fragrance of Guava' ( Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza in conversation with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.) My copy has two Freetown addresses scribbled in the back so I must have taken it to Sierra Leone. Anyway it's basically one long conversation with Marquez organised into short chapters. There's one each on his two most famous novels, then one on Origins, Family, His Craft, Education, Readings and Influences, Work, Waiting, Now, Politics, Women, Superstitions Mania and Tastes and (lastly!) Fame and the Famous. It is thought provoking and I took it out again yesterday when I started thinking about superstition.
I'm not that superstitious though I detest Friday 13th. Early this year it fell in the middle of holiday school so I kept my daughter home. In a month there's another - in holiday school again so I'll do the same. That's one of my few concessions. My mother holds this 'reverse superstition' thing where she almost goes out of her way to disprove it. She wore green when she married for the 2nd time on Friday 13th (and no - it didn't last).
Everyone seems superstitious here, in one way or another. One of my hub's female relatives will get up in the middle of the night during an electrical storm to cover all the mirrors with a sheet to prevent bad luck.
© F Jason
In this photo a sangoma (witch doctor) is interviewed by a journalist. Her beliefs don't allow her to look in the face of a white man. Instead he must direct his question to the small circular mirror she is holding.
Last year was sent The Travelers - a book of photographs by Elizabeth Heyert taken at a Harlem undertaker. Macabre and fascinating - it is a series of huge colour photographs of dead black Americans of varying ages - dressed up in their Sunday best for their journey to heaven.
Anyoldhow sometime ago, this book was lying on the sofa when the 'light bulb people' came round. (South Africa is becoming more eco-friendly and so light bulb people were despatched to every house in the land to exchange the old light bulbs for the new two-prong low energy ones - bulb for bulb - totally free. While hub was up the ladder unscrewing bulbs all over the house, the Xhosa light bulb official started looking through this book with great interest. Then she took out a notebook and started writing things down. Of course being a nosy writer, I had to ask what she was writing. She said 'the birth dates and death dates of the people in the photos - to use to play the Lotto!
Dead people have great powers...
Later
I'm not that superstitious though I detest Friday 13th. Early this year it fell in the middle of holiday school so I kept my daughter home. In a month there's another - in holiday school again so I'll do the same. That's one of my few concessions. My mother holds this 'reverse superstition' thing where she almost goes out of her way to disprove it. She wore green when she married for the 2nd time on Friday 13th (and no - it didn't last).
Everyone seems superstitious here, in one way or another. One of my hub's female relatives will get up in the middle of the night during an electrical storm to cover all the mirrors with a sheet to prevent bad luck.
© F JasonIn this photo a sangoma (witch doctor) is interviewed by a journalist. Her beliefs don't allow her to look in the face of a white man. Instead he must direct his question to the small circular mirror she is holding.
Last year was sent The Travelers - a book of photographs by Elizabeth Heyert taken at a Harlem undertaker. Macabre and fascinating - it is a series of huge colour photographs of dead black Americans of varying ages - dressed up in their Sunday best for their journey to heaven.
Anyoldhow sometime ago, this book was lying on the sofa when the 'light bulb people' came round. (South Africa is becoming more eco-friendly and so light bulb people were despatched to every house in the land to exchange the old light bulbs for the new two-prong low energy ones - bulb for bulb - totally free. While hub was up the ladder unscrewing bulbs all over the house, the Xhosa light bulb official started looking through this book with great interest. Then she took out a notebook and started writing things down. Of course being a nosy writer, I had to ask what she was writing. She said 'the birth dates and death dates of the people in the photos - to use to play the Lotto!
Dead people have great powers...
Later
Friday, April 27, 2007
Taboo
I do love a bit of taboo. Every so often I read a news story that, in my opinion would make a fantastic film and which I'd love to write the screenplay for. So in a first for this blog, I've decided to declare my interest in this news item - "75 year old Granny & her 25 year old Gambian lover" here .
I know that there are all kinds of legal issues with scripting a real story (about real people.) But aside from this and in the unlikely event that anyone has managed to snap up the film rights from this duo, I'm your writer.
How I'd love to get right inside their heads. She - sedate, reserved, well travelled and now 'livid' with her granddaughter's betrayal in a revelatory article in the Guardian earlier this week. He - the softly spoken black outsider, forced to smoke out of a bedroom window and with no one else to talk to.
It's not just the obvious age and cultural differences that attract me but the whole idea of 'impropriety' in middle England and the subtly embedded prejudices at play within and outside the family. I know this 'type' of story pops up fairly frequently but this particular tale resonates with me.
The 'family values' sub text of the Daily Mail's story here focuses on why a gentile, respectable elderly lady of means from the 'picturesque village of Buriton' should embark on such an 'unsuitable' and (probably) doomed relationship. No one seems too interested in imagining what the young man may be thinking.
Yes there have been other films about supposedly 'mis-matched romance' notably The Mother brilliantly scripted by Hanif Kureishi and Vers le Sud (Heading South) with Charlotte Rampling and my all time favourite: Harold and Maude but this story seems to offer even more fascinating possibilities.
What do you think? And have you come across a news story you'd love to script?
I know that there are all kinds of legal issues with scripting a real story (about real people.) But aside from this and in the unlikely event that anyone has managed to snap up the film rights from this duo, I'm your writer.
How I'd love to get right inside their heads. She - sedate, reserved, well travelled and now 'livid' with her granddaughter's betrayal in a revelatory article in the Guardian earlier this week. He - the softly spoken black outsider, forced to smoke out of a bedroom window and with no one else to talk to.
It's not just the obvious age and cultural differences that attract me but the whole idea of 'impropriety' in middle England and the subtly embedded prejudices at play within and outside the family. I know this 'type' of story pops up fairly frequently but this particular tale resonates with me.
The 'family values' sub text of the Daily Mail's story here focuses on why a gentile, respectable elderly lady of means from the 'picturesque village of Buriton' should embark on such an 'unsuitable' and (probably) doomed relationship. No one seems too interested in imagining what the young man may be thinking.
Yes there have been other films about supposedly 'mis-matched romance' notably The Mother brilliantly scripted by Hanif Kureishi and Vers le Sud (Heading South) with Charlotte Rampling and my all time favourite: Harold and Maude but this story seems to offer even more fascinating possibilities.
What do you think? And have you come across a news story you'd love to script?
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Who's who
Nicked from Robin Kelly's website is this link to an interview with playwright Lonnie Carter who is not interested in plays about white males. Read it here
"I don’t have any hesitation writing about Black people, working with Black directors, actors. It feels comfortable. If you’re observant, you can write about cultures other than your own. Men can write about women. Blacks can write about Whites. Gays can write about straights, whatever. There should be no restrictions on what writers write."
"I don’t have any hesitation writing about Black people, working with Black directors, actors. It feels comfortable. If you’re observant, you can write about cultures other than your own. Men can write about women. Blacks can write about Whites. Gays can write about straights, whatever. There should be no restrictions on what writers write."
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