“Is that Black Enough For You?” is a superb rare gold mining of Black films and their impact. Watch it!
“It was great. Regretted not having my pen handy to note down all the movies I’d never heard of. Will have to watch it again”, said Esther Weekes, a Flamenco Blues singer and Flamenco dancer, commenting on my Lk platform.
Caroline Ribeiro-Nelson, a Diverse Mental Health & Well Being Consultant commented “Important insights to be gained here. Thanks for sharing this Dr. David Dunkley Gyimah”
I’m very late to the party, but Elvis Mitchell’s Is that Black Enough For You is required watching in you’re interested in Black film and its history expressed in an erudite and absorbing fashion.
There are many gems to reap, such as how Black films pioneered the movie soundtrack being released first to draw interest to the ensuing film. Or when Mega star Steve McQueen is sent flying trying to impress an up and coming Black actor about his knowledge of martial arts. You’re off balance McQueen is told by the actor. Show me he requests. Flying commences.
Then there’s Melvin Van Peeble’s pioneering stunt at convincing white movie bosses that his film had the hallmarks of being a great film at a test screening. Van Peebles paid the janitor to gesture enthusiastically during the screening. Movie bosses fell for it.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Van Peebles when I presented a show for the BBC in the 1990s. I admit whilst I knew of his work back then, I didn’t know as much as is revealed in Mitchell’s Is that Black Enough For You.
Mitchell’s documentary on Netflix reveals the genre-breaking inclusion of Black filmmakers casting Black actors as cowboys. It didn’t sell in the beginning. Literally a whitewash of the facts had taken shape. Something I learned interviewing Walter Mosley.
Cowboys were Black. Cowmen were white. Somehow Cowmen didn’t have the same ring about it.
One of my favourite actors who’s given the soft spotlight in the doc is Billy Dee Williams, an actor who would make men and women turn and scream I’m just digitising some archive from an interview with him, and Louis Cameron Gossett Jr ( Officer and a Gentleman) in Sun City many years ago.
Catch Is that Black Enough For You on Netflix. You won’t be disappointed.
