Tag: Black American Cinema

Friday Foster (1975)

While it has violence and nudity, there’s something lighter and frothier about the blaxploitation film, Friday Foster (1975); it’s almost ready to be a crowd-pleasing TV movie pilot, maybe because the film is being based on a comic strip (comparable to Modesty Blaise in terms of syndicated newspaper comics). A vehicle for the great Pam Grier who proves her star power here as the title character, a photo journalist for Glance magazine who has ties to the fashion industry, and is assigned to cover the airport arrival of Blake Tarr (Thalmus Rasulala), a black billionaire Howard Hughes type. When there’s an assassination attempt (one of the shooters is a young Carl Weathers) and Friday gets the scoop, the stage is set for her to be an amateur sleuth that continually gets into The Perils Of Pauline type sticky situations; this gives Grier the chance to alternate between earnest sincerity and charming goofiness. There’s a murder mystery and a political conspiracy, and multiple location shots of Washington DC, and a whispered figure at the centre of it all, the “Black Widow”. It’s also refreshing to see Yaphet Kotto in a wise-cracking hero role, playing Colt Hawkins, a private detective on the case and a foil to Friday; their partnership feels like a nice spin on The Thin Man or Bogey-and-Bacall Hollywood detective dynamic. There’s a great cast including Godfrey Cambridge, Julius Harris, Scatman Crothers, and Eartha Kitt as fashion designer Madame Rena, delightfully tearing through their scenes without even a glance in the rear-view mirror. There’s a sunny neo-noir vibe and screwball comedy throwback gags and patter, just with more casual sex. Music by Luchi De Jesus who also contributes the very catchy title track. As with most 1970s blaxploitation, this was directed by a white guy, Arthur Marks, who also made other classics of the genre that I haven’t seen like Detroit 9000, Bucktown and JD’s Revenge. Streamed on Criterion Channel but also available to rent on iTunes. Recommended.

Killer Of Sheep (1977)

Thanks to Revelation Film Festival’s online version of their annual film festival, Couched, which ran this year in July, they included a Black Lives Matter section that included two films by Black American filmmaker Charles Burnett. Killer Of Sheep (1977), Burnett’s thesis film at UCLA, was something I’d long wanted to see due to its critical reputation, a lost classic of Black cinematic expression (the print was restored in 2007). The film was slightly different to what I expected, with a short running time at 80 minutes and alongside its neo-realistic style, it was also impressionistic and not interested in narrative plot. Like a documentary, Killer Of Sheep is observational and unhurried in its camerawork. Set in the Watts area, we move between scenes of kids playing – in dirt-pits, train tracks, rooftops – and one family, the father (Henry G. Sanders) working in a slaughterhouse, either tired and despondent particular with his wife, or travelling around with a buddy on the look out for a new motor. Shot in black and white, the imagery feels of the past and captures a time and a place, but like any black and white production in a time when colour footage was available, it also creates almost a space outside of time, complimented by the older songs on the soundtrack (Dinah Washington’s ‘This Bitter Earth’ in a key scene). Moments of humour mixed with resigned sadness, it leaves things open for interpretation, unconcerned with fitting the life it is capturing with character arcs or storylines or even a conventional ending that wraps things up. Very influential with its use of location shooting and low budget independence to depict Black life in America, capturing things as they are, yet also investing in its imagery and tone with artistry. Recommended.