AFS Essentials: Black Is, Black Ain't and Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask

Most of the time it is easier to just blend in with everything around you, to not be different, to avoid rocking the proverbial boat, perhaps to the detriment of your true identity and eventually your soul. In the final offering of their essentials series Torn from the Motherland: Films from the African Diaspora, the Austin Film Society brings us Black Is, Black Ain't and Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, two documentaries that take a look at not only the struggle for any specific group to understand their true identity, but also the battle to retain that identity in a world that increasingly pushes us toward assimilation.

In Black Is, Black Ain't filmmaker Marlon Riggs sought to explore what it means to be black in America, from the period when "being Black wasn't always so beautiful" to the 1992 Los Angeles riots. A highly personal film for Riggs, he equates the thoughts and experiences of notable black cultural leaders to that of a "rich gumbo", proposing that an overall understanding of the many facets of "blackness" cannot be confined to one person's rigid standards and definitions, but that they must be cooked together in a thick cultural stew. The film bemoans the self-hating racism, sexism, and homophobia that runs rampant among the group of people that share his skin color and strives to illustrate Riggs' journey to understand what it really means to be black. Sadly, the film was finished in the wake of Riggs' passing in 1994 after losing his battle with AIDS.