Hear the Elder Roar...

"Hear the Elder Roar" is a segment of this blog that I will frequent visit and hope other folks will share and join in on as well! What I aim to do with sharing these voices and experiences is to bridge the inter-generational gems that exist between both our elders and youth ( ancestors and ancestral spirits as well) in this space as a communal meeting ground for all to be heard and learned from .... for the survival of our coming together and unique educational & healing traditions. So I hope you enjoy the first entry and can take much from the thoughts and experience below!

As the evening of February 1 was well underway, I just made my way to student activity room 200A for the kick-off of the 2nd Annual Oscar Micheaux Film Festival at Temple Uni. Such a commencement was led by a panel discussion on "100 Years of Blacks in Film" with Michele Parkerson and John King, who offered the following words and insights on this cultural history of Black cinema.

                        (I'll try my best to distinguish between the voices of the two speakers, my paraphrasing intake, and the context of which everything was delivered within)
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"Race films affirm Black people" JK

"Making these images (images of Black folks, by Black folks, for Black folks) is the real power to be had" MP

The question, "What has enraged us in the past 100 years and why" is one of the many leading questions Parkerson proposed we ask ourselves when discerning the topic of our Black cinematic history, the present state of Black films (and Black folks in film), and the future of such. I feel like naming and tracing such could be a very purposeful exercise in the quest to approach the future of Black films (and Black folks in film) with a more critical and strategic eye.

"Certain (Black/African) aesthetics need to be re-imaged for the digital age, when concerning, 'what Black cinemas mean (look like and deliver now in terms of aesthetics) now'" MP

King addressed an inquiry delivered from the moderator (Chinonye Chuwku) about the portrayal or liveliness, if you will, of identity politics within Black films as being centered around a concern with class. In stating, " The segment of identity politics we need to be concerned with is class" King offered thoughts around understanding and better interrogating the ways in which class politics have been shaping, molding, and blasting messages of what it (should) mean/ is to be Black- how class delivers identifiers for Black identity. 

Paraphrasing with the best notes ever ... "As the technology changes, I want people of color, especially women of color, to stay on top of (move more into) the production side of film,in expansion of the directing, etc." MP

Again paraphrasing with the best notes a multi-tasking listener, writer, and taking in-er can be... " We need to address the lack of choice of images, instead of the lack of images..." as consumers, viewers, and the larger Black community as well as film makers. As she (MP) explores its not the argument of there being a lack of images, but the struggle of choice in images we produce and distribute. This is one of the most powerful things an artist have, this choices (as in variety) of images to push.

All in all...this pushed me to want to push harder with my curriculum and its bottom level  aim of giving/ exposing my young girls to a lifestyle of "critical viewership" (as said by Osizwe Eyi di yiye) to confront media images and messages that may be harmful for/towards them...with hopes that they will take on the tasks of producing their own for their/our own!

Here is a link to the Film Festival's website...check it out and join the fun!
http://www.omfilmfestival.com/home/


Peace & Blessings... and Hear Me Roar,

L. Jones