As we celebrate in the penultimate month of a year of immeasurable global sorrow and angst, it may be tempting to announce, like Walter Sobchak does in The Big Lebowski, “Our fuckin’ troubles are over, Dude.”
But as smart Scene readers know, we’ve got a long, long way to go. Although Trump seems the physical embodiment of racial hatred, racism certainly didn’t start with him, and it won’t end when Joe Biden puts his hand on the Bible on Jan. 20.
“Black Thoughts” is a short film by local filmmaker Dwayne Logan that will keep you grounded in the struggle for racial equity. This is not to say that we should quit our celebrations and exhalations. But we can let the momentum of Trump’s defeat propel us into the next phase of the work. Logan’s film offers an intimate look at how racism impacts him on a daily basis, and it’s a post-election must-see.
For much of the 30-minute film, Logan stands centerstage in a spotlight as he delivers a powerful monologue. “Black Thoughts” echoes critical texts like James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. Logan movingly addresses his children, explaining the history of racism, the challenges that they will face, and the ways in which he struggles to prepare them for these challenges.
“Even in my Sunday’s best,” Logan says in the film, “I still have to go the extra mile to be seen in a different light.”
Still, he beseaches his daughter — who appears in the film wearing a pink tulle skirt — to “spin endlessly in your juice-stained dress, tumble in your wild and loose curls, and run, my dear, run with bare feet without caring who sees you.”
Yet other parts of his monologue are painful to witness, as images of lynchings and racist caricatures flash across the screen. Actors briefly appear to act out experiences Logan has had, like when a white couple and their adult daughter greet him on the sidewalk of his new neighborhood, the daughter curtly asking, “Which house is yours?” In another scene, a white school teacher draws a red pen across his homework, saying, "I just can't read your handwriting."
“ ‘Black Thoughts’ is an outpouring of a human heart into film format,” Logan tells the Scene in an email. “It is a short film spawned by exacerbated levels of witnessed and experienced racism-induced trauma.”
Logan says that "Black Thoughts" aims to converse with America. “It offers up the laid-bare interior of a Black man’s soul, as a preconception-pausing peace flag, while asking for America to take a brief journey through history in an effort to add context to woefully misunderstood issues. The film is the lamentation of a dehumanized and systemically oppressed people. A people that are simply asking for truth to be known and for circumstances surrounding many of their current conditions to be considered.”
Skillfully rendered and beautifully acted, “Black Thoughts” presents a portrait of one man’s experience that will resonate with some and instruct others. Watch the trailer below, and see the full film on YouTube.
Black Thoughts - Trailer - Web from Dwayne Logan on Vimeo.
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November 10, 2020 at 01:30AM
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This Short Film Will Keep You Grounded in the Struggle for Racial Equity - Nashville Scene
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