REVIEW | BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL: THE KWAME BRATHWAITE STORY [FILM] IN COVERVASTION WITH YEMI BAMIRO

By Apex Zero • On Interviews

There are some films that needed to be made. When you watch them, there can be many effects. One is that of a har­mon­isa­tion that you didn’t know was miss­ing, a filling in of a hole in your cul­tur­al land­scape that, now present, res­on­ates in a way that makes it feel more com­plete than it had before. This was my exper­i­ence watch­ing “Black is Beau­ti­ful: The Kwame Brath­waite Story”, a poignant, vibrant doc­u­ment­ary dir­ec­ted by Yemi Bamiro, shed­ding new light on the life of a mas­ter Pan-Afric­an artist and the fam­ily and com­munity whose recip­roc­al love fostered and fuelled his incred­ible life’s work.

Kwame Brath­waite, his wife Sikolo and his broth­er Elombe are pion­eers of the Black is Beau­ti­ful move­ment, the con­scious and delib­er­ate cam­paign ini­ti­ated in the 1950’s to encour­age people of Afric­an ori­gin to be proud of our her­it­age, our deep cul­tur­al and Spir­itu­al his­tory and the phys­ic­al fea­tures it endows us with. Born out of the grow­ing Pan-Afric­an revolu­tion­ary ideals that were reshap­ing the minds and lives of Afric­an people across the world, through their prac­tice of art as polit­ics embod­ied in their Afric­an Jazz Art Soci­ety & Stu­dio (AJASS) and Gran­dassa Mod­els organ­isa­tions, the Brathwaite’s and their wider com­munity were a driv­ing force behind the move­ment. As Bamiro doc­u­ments beau­ti­fully, they coined the slo­gan ‘Black is Beau­ti­ful’, liv­ing the prin­ciples, sink­ing it into every act of cre­ativ­ity and mobil­isa­tion they under­took, from Kwame’s stun­ning pho­to­graphy to their con­tri­bu­tions towards lib­er­at­ing Afric­an nations with mul­tiple forms of support.

70 years of impact by the move­ment can make it easy to take it for gran­ted just how huge a shift in think­ing this idea was in the mid-20th cen­tury. 400 years of cal­cu­lated Afro­phobic racist con­di­tion­ing had taken dev­ast­at­ing hold on many soci­et­ies, includ­ing in the USA. The affil­i­ation of white­ness with not only beauty, but clean­li­ness, right­eous­ness and divin­ity and Black­ness with all the oppos­ites, cre­ated a deep seated, inter­n­al­ised racism with­in indi­vidu­als and com­munit­ies. As Brenda Evans, an ori­gin­al Gran­dassa mod­el expresses in the film, her moth­er told her “when you see me in the street, don’t talk to me”, if she chose to wear her hair as it grew nat­ur­ally, and wasn’t straightened. The film por­trays the early res­ist­ance that even com­munit­ies like Har­lem had to the movement’s afros, Afric­an aes­thet­ics and cloth­ing and appre­ci­ation of dark skin, as Black people came out to protest against the events of unapo­lo­get­ic Afric­an pride, cel­eb­rat­ing Afric­an eth­ni­city and Black beauty.

Over dec­ades, the move­ment spread nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally, was co-opted by cap­it­al­ism, but ulti­mately became so suc­cess­ful it changes the world, trans­form­ing with how Black people see ourselves, our bod­ies, our Ances­try and our place in our soci­et­ies, to the point that the man­tra Black is Beau­ti­ful become so wide reach­ing, so accep­ted and pop­ular­ised that the Brathwaite’s and their roles were absorbed to the extent they are almost writ­ten out of the story.

With an amaz­ing cast of the Brathwaite’s fam­ily, friends, col­lab­or­at­ors, arch­iv­ists and col­lect­ors of Kwame’s works, Bamiro and his team build on the archiv­al work of Kwame and Sikolo chil­dren and his­tor­i­an Tan­isha Ford, fol­low­ing the family’s jour­ney of unearth­ing Kwame’s art and bring­ing the Brathwaite’s leg­acy to the fore, build­ing out­wards from Kwame’s pho­to­graphy. Speak­ing with Bamiro before the film’s première at the BFI Lon­don, he spoke of the “over­rid­ing feel­ing of grat­it­ude and priv­ilege” he felt to get to work on such an import­ant piece of his­tory, being “the cus­todi­an” of a pre­cious and fra­gile story that had been a whispered and not shouted part of the Black Lib­er­a­tion struggle, so required care­ful hand­ling. With intric­ate care and a del­ic­ate intim­acy, Bamiro and his team gave “a nod to Kwame’s aes­thet­ic” in the how they craf­ted the film, pick­ing loc­a­tions “that felt like loc­a­tions that he would have shot his sub­jects in”. They stayed in Har­lem for stretches of the pro­duc­tion, soak­ing up the energy of the Brathwaite’s home for so long, that is still a cent­ral hub of Afric­an Amer­ic­an creativity.

This intim­acy and care are tan­gible in the doc­u­ment­ary, some­thing Bamiro inten­ded and achieved. He has craf­ted a work that he con­siders to be a love story, a love that the Brathwaite’s had for their people, but “ulti­mately a love story between Kwame and Sikolo… always felt about one man’s love for his woman.” One of Bamiro’s major takeaways from pro­duc­tion is that Kwame “…loved his people, he loved Black women, he loved Black men, he wanted Black people to love them­selves. He took it on him­self to be the mes­sen­ger of that…but the love he had for Sikolo was the thing. Black women are co-cur­at­ors of the Black is Beau­ti­ful movement…if it wasn’t for Black Women, I don’t know if you’d have a Black is Beau­ti­ful move­ment in the way that you had it. He ped­es­talled those women and he show­cased them, but they also had agency over their own selves. Him and Elombe just helped them along.”

“Love is at the heart of all of this…and I think you see that through the leg­acy of love through what Kwame Jr and Robynn have done with the archive, you know? It’s not an easy thing to do, to take on that work and to pro­mote it in that way; they have three chil­dren, they have jobs, but to put that at the centre of their world is that love for their fath­er, and their fath­er-in-law. Love is at the heart of all of this one. Love is a cent­ral thing”.

One of the oth­er core themes woven through the film is Kwame Brathwaite’s abil­ity to sim­ul­tan­eously live his art and polit­ics. The film cap­tures the insepar­ab­il­ity of the two as his life’s work. While the Black is Beau­ti­ful move­ment was inher­ently polit­ic­al, it was born out of the Brathwaite’s Pan-Afric­an world­view. The broth­ers made con­stant con­tri­bu­tions to Afric­an lib­er­a­tion, from send­ing mater­i­al sup­port to numer­ous lib­er­a­tion move­ments, to host­ing revolu­tion­ar­ies in New York, to trav­el­ling to Africa and doc­u­ment­ing the waves of change. There is an exquis­ite scene where Kwame Jr. tells of his love for his father’s check­list of lib­er­ated Afric­an nations, which really spoke to the ded­ic­a­tion he had to the lib­er­a­tion of Afric­an people all over the world, and how his art was one of the many ways he found to play his part. Bamiro reflects on this are powerful:

“He was just a man that lived many lives. He died when he was he was 85 years old; when you look at his life and all the things that he did and all the dif­fer­ent hats that he wore , It was­n’t just the stuff, the celebrity stuff, It was­n’t just the stuff in the Apollo. It was­n’t just the stuff in Africa. It was­n’t just the stuff of like nor­mal black people on the street in Har­lem. It was­n’t just the album cov­ers. He found a way to con­tin­ue to e pro­mote us, ped­es­tal us, but then also find this cre­at­ive sat­is­fac­tion from every hat that he wore….That is just such an amaz­ing thing to do over the course of 85 years of your life. To have a life that full, that you made that much of a con­tri­bu­tion, you did that much. It’s just incred­ible. He did­n’t waste any time”.

The film is a sequence of won­der­ful real­isa­tions and les­sons. One, which was part of one of both mine and Bamiro’s favour­ite scenes, was the speech Nel­son Man­dela gave in Har­lem after becom­ing lead­er of post-apartheid South Africa. I had no idea this had happened; like many aspects of Kwame Brathwaite’s life and career, he and Elombe has facil­it­ated it, in their typ­ic­ally under­stated and humble way. I had been raised on the affirm­a­tion that Black is Beau­ti­ful, had of heard Kwame Braitjwaite’s name and seen some of his work, but until see­ing this film I was not aware of how pro­lif­ic he was, how cent­ral he and his fam­ily were to sev­er­al massive move­ments, just how influ­en­tial he had been and con­tin­ues to be, or how under­ap­pre­ci­ate he had been for so long. The grat­it­ude I feel in now being aware of all of this is test­a­ment to both the power­ful leg­acy of the Brathwaite’s and to Bamiro’s film­mak­ing. This film deserves all the great suc­cess that I’m sure it will receive.

 

 

The fol­low­ing two tabs change con­tent below.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profile

Apex Zero

An emcee, beat­maker, film­maker and writer from Lon­don with Gren­adian roots, Apex Zero has spent his life learn­ing and liv­ing Hip Hop cul­ture, using it to inspire and affect change. Based in Beijing for a few years and reg­u­larly tour­ing the globe, Apex is well trav­elled, and uses the les­sons this provides to inform his art and out­look. He is a mem­ber of the Glob­al­Fac­tion digit­al pro­duc­tion house and the inter­na­tion­al Hip Hop col­lect­ive End of the Weak.

About Apex Zero

An emcee, beatmaker, filmmaker and writer from London with Grenadian roots, Apex Zero has spent his life learning and living Hip Hop culture, using it to inspire and affect change. Based in Beijing for a few years and regularly touring the globe, Apex is well travelled, and uses the lessons this provides to inform his art and outlook. He is a member of the GlobalFaction digital production house and the international Hip Hop collective End of the Weak.