The Black List: Volume One

I was fortunate to be in the audience at a screening of The Black List Project at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, August 4, 2008. The Black List film is a montage of American figures that illustrate distinctive Black American experiences in a non-intrusive, non-moralizing manner. From a mix of political/academic figures and athletes to writers and entertainers, the film illustrates an array of perspectives that can be appreciated by all.

With candidness and innocence of intent, the film does not try to solve problems of the world but rather allows five-minute shards of insight into the experiences that have shaped some of the iconic figures in contemporary American and Black history. The figures seated without adornment, display themselves with bare dialogue not devoid of a very palpable and physical authority. Filmmakers Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell capture the layered essence of each vignette that fortifies the content of the piece. The close-up camera technique forces the audience to heed the temper of facial expressions and gestures, while pondering the meaning and weight behind the verbal messages.

In a time where cinematic media characteristically depicts images of Black America in a slanted hue for bottom-line effect, it was refreshing to see a film not have a feeling of being corporative in any fashion. It was reminiscent of reading an autobiography, where you are so immersed that you seem to be engaged in conversation with the subject. In The Black List, the audience advances into a listening friend, sibling or student of Keenen Ivory Wayans, Vernon Jordan, Chris Rock, Serena Williams, Toni Morrison, Zane, Al Sharpton, and others; a sort of dinner party of fascinating figures. Opening with Slash, the race-ambiguous former lead guitarist of the group Guns-N-Roses, you are immediately thrust into a dynamic 90-minute journey. Overall, the film inspires one to achieve, be reflective of one's earthly purpose, and hear the understated dimensions of struggle often overlooked.

As managing editor of UZURI, an African inspired fashion magazine, I found it refreshing to see the variety of personalities depicted in the film, the featureless but energizing format, and the frank dialogue. Faultless in aim, the documentary will make for a great night with friends and family to revel in and learn from the uniqueness of these individual expressions. I do not know what Greenfield-Sanders and Mitchell were personally trying to achieve with the film, but I know if you put out a motivating concept, you get interesting conclusions in return. And, with that being said, you will take away from the film what it gives you and ultimately form your own.

When it comes to making out your list of things to do for the remainder of the summer, make sure The Black List, which airs on HBO, August 25, 2008, 9 P.M. EST is on your viewing schedule!

Cedrick Smith, MD Managing Editor UZURI Magazine www.uzuri.com

"They think I'm Jewish," he says. "I'm in the Jewish book of famous people. But as far as, you know, on the professional level, I think it's pretty common knowledge that I'm half black or whatever. I was never really fazed by the, sort of, the color barrier, you know?"

Slash, the former lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses, is talking. The son of a black mother and a white father, he is the first among the 23 renowned people who muse, confess and tell stories in "The Black List: Volume 1," a 90-minute documentary scheduled to have its television premiere on HBO on Monday night. A collaboration between the portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who directed it, and the film critic Elvis Mitchell, who did the interviews, it consists of a series of portraits capturing the range of what is often called the black experience.

Not everyone is as well known to the general public. Zane, a best-selling author of erotic fiction, gets a turn here, as does Mahlon Duckett, a former Negro league baseball player. Thelma Golden, the director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, says: "One of the funniest experiences I had when I began working in the art world is that people always assumed I worked for Thelma Golden, not that I was Thelma Golden. The kind of dismissal that comes from just people's sense that they don't imagine you are who you are actually has been one of the most powerful and liberating things for me in my work."

A minimalist film, without narration and with very little on the screen except people talking, "The Black List" (which had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year) derives its considerable energy and elegance from its subjects. Mr. Mitchell, the host of the new TCM interview series "Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence" and a former film critic for The New York Times, is never on screen. Rather, Mr. Mitchell said, he and Mr. Greenfield-Sanders played their hands behind the scenes.

Next month the 25 portraits, along with first-person essays by their subjects, will be brought together in a book, "The Black List," to be published by Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster. The film shows Richard D. Parsons, the chairman of Time Warner, recalling the time he accidentally burned down his house when he was a child, something that won him extra attention from his grandmother. Mr. Sharpton talks about his favorite scripture and what he learned from James Brown about embracing controversy. ("I learned manhood from James Brown," he says.) Faye Wattleton, a women's rights advocate, laments that her daughter missed growing up with the solidarity and values exemplified by an all-black community in the days before desegregation.

"You're always black," Mr. Rock says. "There's always going to kind of be an overreaction one way or the other regarding your presence, be it good or bad." A few beats later, he says that the "true, true equality" is the equality to be as bad as "the white man," adding, "That's really Martin Luther King's dream coming true."

Mr. Mitchell said he envisioned "The Black List" as a response to past documentaries about race that tended to be soaked in politics and sociology, with victims and experts front and center. He simply asked the subjects all the things he wanted to know about them, he said.

"What you tend not to see are films on black people radiating in the pleasure of their success and telling their stories," he said. "You come to the point whenever you see a black person on television, it's either a comedy or some tragic issue being spoken to. You wouldn't think that black people could get through a competently managed day, let alone being successful at it."

Not that Mr. Mitchell buys into the notion of a so-called postracial society, as evidenced by Senator Barack Obama's political ascendancy or the rise of a black middle class. Mr. Powell, in the film, speaks to that issue.

"It can't be all over as long as we have young African-American boys and girls who are not able to get the quality education they need," he says, "or are still being held back because people are looking down on them."

He reached out to Mr. Mitchell, a neighbor as well a friend, and they traded ideas over lunch at a Thai restaurant around the corner. By the end of their meal they had 175 names on a napkin and a plan. They began contacting subjects, striving for a mix of disciplines, ages, perspectives. Mr. Mitchell did the interviews. Mr. Greenfield-Sanders did the portraits.

"The Black List" ends up capturing the feeling of watching and listening to people think out loud.

"Almost all of the African-American writers that I know were very much uninterested in one area of the world, which is white men," Ms. Morrison says. "That frees up a lot.

"It's a lot more than just hitting the ball as hard as you can," she continues. "It's all about strategy and moving your opponent and just really figuring them out. Like I never get credit for mental, and I just, it's, you know, frustrating.

The enterprise has been so much fun that Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Greenfield-Sanders have no intention of stopping just yet. HBO is sponsoring a "Who's on Your Black List" contest, which invites the public to submit videos of people they nominate to be filmed, interviewed and photographed for more "Black List" volumes. Information is at whosonyourblacklist.com.

"It's against every rule of modern cinema, in a sense," he said of this new franchise. "This is just saying I trust this person's story is interesting enough, that his or her face is interesting enough to look at for five minutes, and I'm going to be engaged."

Black List, which will run on HBO, ran this week at the SXSW Film Festival. The concept for the film is intriguing, but the ultimate execution is rather uneven. It is unclear what, if anything, Elvis Mitchell and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders are trying to say with this film.

They have gathered together 20 well-known African-Americans and had them speak in monologue form to the camera about the black experience. Some are celebrities, while others are successful, but with a lower public profiles. The interviews are interesting independently and many leave you wondering what else the interviewees said that was edited out. Most of the interviewees are from the worlds of politics, entertainment(music and acting), literature and sports. Academics and scientists are notably absent. They will probably show up in the promised volume 2.

They have reclaimed the negative term "Black List" as a positive concept, but it remains unclear what the film makers are trying to do with the film. The comments are, for the most part, interesting, sometimes quite insightful. However, they are also edited together in a somewhat random order. It is unclear what question or questions they are replying to. There is little sense of dialog among the interviewees. Because they have included 20 people, each one only gets 4 to 5 minutes of screen time which is presumably the most interesting clips from their longer interviews.

If their goal was to demonstrate to blacks and white that the African-American community is diverse and complicated, they have done that. However, the lack of connecting tissue between the interviews and the ideas seems to leave the film feeling a bit incomplete, confused, and somewhat unsatisfactory. However, perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the situation of African-Americans in the U.S. is a bit incomplete, confused, and somewhat unsatisfactory.