More to black cinema than blaxploitation

"There is a fascinating African-American cinema that is not just blaxploitation," says Dalhousie Art Gallery film curator Ron Foley Macdonald.  "There are these filmmaking streams that are very rich that often don't get the same attention."

This year's African Heritage Month film screenings at the gallery will showcase that tradition of "black films made for black audiences outside of any Hollywood influence," beginning with the much-revered but little-seen Killer of Sheep, by Charles Burnett.  Burnett's 1977 MFA thesis project is cited as one of the "100 Essential Films" by the National Society of Film Critics, and was among the first 50 films selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry.  The film had been beautifully restored and blown up to 35 millimeter seven years ago, but it was only last year that the music rights were settled and the film could be shown in theatres and released on DVD.

African heritage month films At the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Tuesdays at 5 p.m. (Free admission) February 5 — Killer Of Sheep Charles Burnett, USA, 1977, 90 min. A slaughterhouse worker struggles to balance domestic and economic concerns in this deeply poetic, non-linear indie African American film. February 12 — My Brother's Wedding Charles Burnett, USA, 1983, 116 min. The second feature by Burnett tells of a young black man making a choice between his social climbing lawyer brother and his own delapidated community. February 19 — Do The Right Thing Spike Lee, USA, 1989, 120 min. An Italian-owned pizzeria in a black neighbourhood becomes a racial flashpoint during the hottest nights of a New York City summer. February 26 — When The Levees Broke Spike Lee, USA, 2007, 256 min. (5-9 pm) Spike Lee's epic examination of the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans is raw, immediate and thorough.

Killer of Sheep, as well as the following film in the screening series, My Brother's Wedding, "chart out an urban reality that is almost never seen," according to Mr. Macdonald.  "What's interesting is that they detail everyday life, without the heavy-handedness of Hollywood."

"You never hear of the black reality of Los Angeles, except for the Watts riots and the Rodney King riots," says Macdonald, noting that he chose this month's Tuesday screenings to fit in with this term's Wednesday night "City In the Cinema" series.

The February series will also include two films by the better known but equally talented Spike Lee—1989's Do the Right Thing, and the four-hour HBO documentary When the Levees Broke, which details in "very powerful" fashion the destruction that Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orleans.

"Everybody knows about what happened in New Orleans with Katrina, but nobody wants to put it on the record—but he does."