The new film ‘1 Angry Black Man Unpacks Racism.
What We Know
- Menelek Lumumba and Hans Charles’ film 1 Angry Black Man is about a Black male senior in college, named Mike, who is within weeks of graduating from a school in Maine.
- The majority of the movie unfolds in Mikes African American literature class where the students use literature by a Black author to discuss issues surrounding racism.
- Lumumba siad the film purposely lacks a change of setting to challenge it’s viewers to face the buried racial issues head on, rather than avoid it.
- The filmmakers explained that the killing of Tamir Rice contributed to the creation of the film. “I’ve been experimenting for years about the idea of doing a single location film, a limited set, something like 12 Angry Men. How it came to be and manifested to 1 Angry Black Man was around all of the police shootings in 2014. I think it was particularly Tamir Rice, [who] was the one I was the most emotional for, because I was about to become a father.”
- He added, “I was trying to really think about a way to dramatize that type of fear, that is a big part of racism, and how that can impact African American men in their college years, their early 20s and how that kind of skews their view of the world. The one set dynamic became a place to address really, really heavy issues where there was no place to go, there was no place to hide.”
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- Thought the film has a limited setting there is lots of dialogue between the characters. The monologues hit on topics such as White feminism, Black religion and politics.
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- Every student in the classroom was either a different gender, race or political background so they could represent larger groups of people.
- With protesters infuriated with the unlawful deaths of Ahmaud Abery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the film gives a déjà vu tone.
It’s unfortunate that the current state of America is the same it was two years ago when the Lumumba wrote the script. 1 Angry Black Man was released on June 5th and is now available to rent and own on DVD on Freestyle Digital Media.
