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Portrait
of the Artist
As A Revolutionary Black Man
By
Marvin X
Dennis Leroy Moore's film could be titled
Portrait of the Artist As A Revolutionary Black Man. In my
review of Amina Bakeer's Bilalian, I concluded that all Muslims
would be proud of her film. I will begin this review by saying
all true Black artists will be proud this young man captured the
agony and ecstasy of being a black artist in America, but more
precisely, the film must be seen as a vindication and extension
of everything the Black Arts Movement (BAM) was about, for it is
an analysis of what BAM did and didn't accomplish. And of course
BAM did not complete it's goal of revolution so the children who
inherited the mantle of BAM are seeking answers to questions
those of us who are a part of BAM left unanswered.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dennis Moore when he did a
production of my first play Flowers for the Trashman in
New York. Then I saw his production of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman.
He enrolled in Julliard but dropped out, maybe for the reasons
the characters discuss in the film that begins with the two main
characters (Abner Sankofa and Cairo) confronting the dean of an
art school who is dismissing them for not having the ability to
perform white western art. This is almost a ritual act for black
artists in white institutions. One is dismissed or one leaves on
one's own in disgust because one's self is missing in the white
western experience. This was true for me as a student at San
Francisco State University, so even though the drama department
produced my first play, I wasn't happy and dropped out to
establish Black Arts West Theatre with Ed Bullins. Dennis
Moore wanted his own theatre as well, so did the character he
plays, Abner Sankofa. This film is clearly autobiographical.
The film's focus is on Cairo the actor, but Abner is a character
study of the mad director and I needed to go no farther than
myself to reflect on Abner. We see him enraged before opening
night, cursing and dismissing his actors for not revealing their
best.
I've wanted to kill my actors for the same
reason, but someone told me, "Marvin, if you kill them, you
won't have anyone to do your plays." Abner throws his
actors off the set and says he'll use cats, one of which is
sitting on his shoulder. Of course, much of this mad action
happens in any theatre, so it is not necessarily a black thang.
And truthfully, nor is the fact that off Broadway and/or
community theatre is eternally in a financial crisis as Abner
found his theatre which ultimately was made homeless because the
bank reclaimed the property.
Just this week while I've been here at the
Pan African Film Festival, I received an email from
Harlem's National Black Theatre director Dr. Barbara Ann Teer
begging for help to save her property, and she's been one of the
success stories in the BAM--she even has a street named in her
honor--but she may be in the street before her show is over. As
the film showed Abner fighting banker Gobbles--as in
Nazi--someone in the audience shouted for him to do street
theatre.
But as BAM realized and as the film noted,
we must own the property, we must own the land, otherwise, we
will be forever at the whim of the landlord. In the film, the
landlord objects to Abner 's production of Blues For Mister
Charlie, even though the script was thirty years old. We see
Abner 's producer JJ, double crossing as producers sometimes do
because they are caught between art and economic realities--they
know money talks and bullshit walks. So Abner and Cairo finally
are without a theatre-- Abner goes home and Cairo goes crazy
which we know doesn't take much for most artists, especially
black ones. He already has an ulcer when we meet him and is so
intense relaxation is a foreign word--his girlfriend is unable
to cool him out: the racial atmosphere of New York (America) is
too much for him.
As BAM realized, Cairo saw the need to be
actively involved in revolutionary struggle--the news of police
killings was taking him into the zone and beyond. He receives
counseling from his elder and one of BAM founders, Umar Bin
Hassan of the Last Poets, who tells the young actor to use his
art as a weapon, that he can be more influential than some
revolutionaries if he keeps it real. Ironically, Bin Hassan is
so busy sipping his Hennessey; we wonder if Cairo can take him
seriously--was Director Dennis making a statement about sobriety
with this scene. Alcohol seemed to be a problem throughout the
movie to the extent that I can see using this film in my
Recovery Theatre.
There is a good discussion of the class problem when Cairo is
seeking direction in his life. His sees a black professor on TV
and confronts him on the campus. The professor is in a rush, as
per usual going nowhere, but attempts to placate the troubled
actor with his book. The Prof invites Cairo to a forum but when
the troubled artist arrives mistakenly on Thanksgiving at the
prof's house, his bourgeoisie guests are so engaged and so
uppity that they have little time for the bum looking actor
seeking help. When Cairo points out the tenured nigguh's
contradictions, his wife calls the police who escort him out the
door.
When Cairo's brother is stopped by police and killed, Cairo
decides to avenge the killing. Although Abner attempts to
suggest another way, Cairo is determined. We hear lines from
Baraka's Dutchman calling on the Black man to kill to redeem his
manhood and Cairo follows the Dutchman in a bloody murder scene
as the camera cuts between ballet dancers and the killing in a
toilet. Dennis Moore is definitely a student of Baraka.
I wish he had stopped the film with Baraka
rather than Baldwin's Fire Next Time--it would have kept his
film in the ideology of BAM rather than the Civil Rights
movement, but as the director told me after the film, he wanted
to throw everything he could throw into it. Sometimes this is
known as overkill and Dennis is guilty. He should cut the
Baldwin lines and let the film end as a statement of the Black
Arts Movement which it essentially is. Not to take anything away
from Baldwin but at the end Dennis tries to crossover and it
doesn't work. As I said at the beginning of this review, this
film is about the Black man as a revolutionary artist, so let it
be.
As An Act of
Protest was written & directed by Dennis Leroy Moore and
produced by Melissa Dymock, A John Brown X Production --
visit
www.asanactofprotest.com
(c) 2002 by Marvin X -- 2/17/02
Printed in the
San
Francisco Bay View Newspaper * * * *
*
update 1 July 2008 |
