FRANTZ FANON: "Black Skin, White Mask"

2009-06-30T21:42:25.826Z

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask explores for the first time on film the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon's two major works, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, were pioneering studies of the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer. Jean-Paul Sartre recognized Fanon as the figure "through whose voice the Third World finds and speaks for itself." This innovative film biography restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary discussions around post-colonial identity.

Isaac Julien, the celebrated black British director of such provocative films as Looking for Langston and Young Soul Rebels, integrates the facts of Fanon's brief but remarkably eventful life with his long and tortuous inner journey. Julien elegantly weaves together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon's work and dramatizations of crucial moments in Fanon's life. Cultural critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Verges position Fanon's work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own.

Born in Martinique in 1925, Fanon received a conventional colonial education. When he went to France to fight in the Resistance and train as a psychiatrist, his assimilationist illusions were shattered by the gaze of metropolitan racism. Out of this experience came his first book Black Skin, White Masks (1952) originally titled "An Essay for the Disalienation of Blacks." Fanon here defined the colonial relationship as the psychological non-recognition of the subjectivity of the colonized.

Soon after taking a position at a psychiatric hospital in Algeria, Fanon became involved in the bitter Algerian civil war, eventually leaving his post to become a full-time militant in the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Out of this struggle, Fanon wrote his most influential book, The Wretched of the Earth, which Stuart Hall describes as the "bible of the decolonization movement."

Fanon died of leukemia in 1961, just as Algeria was winning its independence. But his seminal texts continue to challenge us to liberate ourselves from all forms of psychological domination.

NELSON MANDELA: Video bio

2009-06-12T23:13:16.818Z

Learn about the history of Nelson Mandela and the liberation struggle that paralleled his life. Learn about the trials and travails of one of the greatest freedom fighters the world has ever known.

MALLE - 1000 STARS MUSIC FESTIVAL

2009-05-03T20:24:58.944Z

Backstage demo of pila flute music by Malle performers at The Ethiopian Millennium 1000 Stars Music Festival, 2007.

Filmed and edited by Ricardo Leizaola and Nico Lewis.

PERSONAL MERCY: NOT JUST ANOTHER EASTER PLAY

2009-04-15T23:45:17.182Z

Drugs and alcohol have ravished the Black community during the 70's and beyond. This play speaks of the struggle to battle this scourge of the community and the salvation many people have found in Christianity.

BLACK MEN BUILT THE CAPITOL

2009-04-06T16:55:55.782Z

This exhibit is coming to Kent State University's Center of Pan-African Culture on April 13, 2009.

Latest Videos - Blakfacts

FRANTZ FANON: "Black Skin, White Mask"

NELSON MANDELA: Video bio

MALLE - 1000 STARS MUSIC FESTIVAL

PERSONAL MERCY: NOT JUST ANOTHER EASTER PLAY

BLACK MEN BUILT THE CAPITOL