The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life referenced the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the elemental static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.
Directed by John Akomfrah
Your score–
Not scoredImages
Cast
Darrick Harris
Malcolm X
Danny Carter
Malcolm's Man
Martin Boothe
Malcolm's Man
Byron O. Hurlock
Malcolm's Man
Edward George
Malcolm's Man
Tricia Rose
Malcolm's Mother
Theodore L. Cash
Malcolm's Father
Olamide Faison
Young Malcolm
Giancarlo Esposito
Autobiography Reading (voice)
Toni Cade Bambara
Commentary (voice)
Coco Fusco
FBI Files Reading (as Coco Fusco)
Tiffany Nelson
Girl
Tiffany Tate
Girl
Wilfred X
(as Wilfred Little)
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