Viola Davis didn’t come any closer The Woman King like just another movie.
The Oscar winner took on the role of Nanisca, a general of the lifelike Agojie warriors, and co-produced the film with her husband. But since it followed a little-known story set in an African kingdom — with a cast of almost entirely black actors — Davis says it was almost impossible to get a studio to buy.
“It’s never been done,” she said on a red carpet ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“You can be a little afraid of something that has never been done before. But sometimes things that have never been done doesn’t mean it won’t land.”
Since then, the film has landed, raking in nearly $2 million in previews before even opening in theaters on Friday. And with it the concepts of Afrofuturism, which reinterpreted Black history and portrayed Black people and their culture as something to look up to and even emulate — rather than being victims of slavery struggling to simply prove their equality.
And as for TIFF, The Woman King was far from alone.
The world premiere for Knight watched Kelvin Harrison Jr. introduce the criminally little-known story of Joseph Bologne—a black swordsman, violin virtuoso, and master classical composer who rivaled Mozart and whom John Adams, the second President of the United States, called “the most accomplished man in the world.” called Europe.”
A world premiere for Sydney tells the story of Sidney Poitier, described in the TIFF synopsis as “one of the most gifted and charismatic actors cinema has ever known”. Dear mum‘s world premiere looks at rapper Tupac and his mother Afeni Shakur and seeks to reframe the story of their contributions to the civil rights movement.
And also its world premiere black icethe Drake-fronted documentary — starring black Canadian NHL superstars PK Subban and Akim Aliu — both of which highlighted the often-ignored contribution of black athletes to the sport (including the introduction of the slapshot) and the racism they continue to face.
“It’s literally Canada’s sport and we don’t know that black people have made all these contributions,” Aliu told CBC on his red carpet. “I just hope this empowers people to look beyond that and lift the hood and say, ‘Hey, what other contributions have people of color made to our society,’ and they’ll quickly find out that we were integral there, where we are today.”
Kim Fain, English professor at Texas Southern University and author of Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the MoviesShe hinted at all these films more than coincidence. They are the result of changing trends in Hollywood, which are themselves a reflection of how society deals with – and understands – how we make history.
“Hollywood reflects the activist movement,” Fain said, citing social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Afrofuturism, a genre of literature that puts black people and culture at the forefront of science and technology.
“When you have a black writer, you have a black director, you have people who say, ‘No … we’re going to highlight the black people who contributed in that way. And we’re going to show you things this way, you’ve never seen it before,'” she said. “We might revisit stories, but then we’re like, ‘Wait a minute, we’re going to tell it our way and the black people re-center how they should be centered in these stories.’”
Reinterpretation of black world history
While The Woman King does not fall under the umbrella of Afrofuturism – which, as the name suggests, often looks to a real or imaginary future – to which Fain was referring Black Panther as a catalyst for the genre’s entry into the mainstream. This film placed a fictional African society at the forefront of modern technology and portrayed a black-led and inhabited nation as a world power.
While this way of presenting a Black community is by no means inaccurate — historically or in the present day — Fain says, until recently it was rarely seen in the mainstream. In the early days of Hollywood, black characters and actors were largely invisible, and when seen, were portrayed as either “slaves, butlers, or maids.”
This subservient role eventually evolved into the “blaxploitation” movement of the 1970s, which shifted to showing blacks as protagonists in films – albeit often through involvement in crimes.
From there, Fain said, a trend evolved from black actors standing up to oppression into a “white savior” trend — in which a black character appears to star when in fact it’s shown to be by a white one Character is saved as in Green Book, The blind side or The help. And out of that came another trend: “trauma porn,” a genre that’s mostly seen in him 12 years a slave, prewar and The subway, where the focus is on black characters suffering the horrors of slavery or police brutality.
“Everything that seemed to come out for a while didn’t necessarily portray us as heroes, but rather as victims,” Fain said. “It almost … retraumatizes us, culturally and individually.”
More recently, Fain said, Black creators like Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele have been able to take power behind the scenes and make films where Black people take control of their own stories.
This movement even extends to films like The Woman Kingwhich intentionally centered on a black cast, to another film at TIFF that subverted tropes in a less intentional way. dedication – which again had its world premiere at the festival – told the story of Jesse Brown, the first black aviator to pass the Navy’s basic flight training program and was killed in the Korean War.
While it still told the story of a black man fighting a racist system while befriending a white officer who tried to help him, star Jonathan Majors (who portrayed Brown) said he specifically took on the role , because the script showed Brown helping himself – instead relying on an outside savior.
“We were portrayed in many ways. Infantilized, you know, in ways like ‘Oh, we can’t help each other.’ No, we can help ourselves,” Majors told CBC News. “We have Jesse Browns proving we can help ourselves. We have Nat Loves to prove we can help ourselves. We have Chadwick Bosemans that prove we can help ourselves. That is the movement.”
But even as the portrayal of black people in the media improves, there is more to consider. Cheryl Thompson, Canadian researcher of black performance arts, says that while it is good to focus on the contributions and stories of black people, it should not come at the expense of highlighting the ongoing struggles of black people.
“It’s kind of a mirage. All [this] amazing black storytelling,” she said. “We’re finally being viewed as kings and queens, but really, when you look at America’s big problems, they just don’t fit the on-screen narrative.”
She cautioned that this is something filmmakers need to balance as the power and influence of black storytelling continues to grow in Hollywood.
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