Black on Both Sides: Grappling with BLM in Movies
Five years since the movement for black lives kicked off, all of us are reflecting on our collective history and arriving at partial conclusions. Some of these conclusions take the form of film, hip hop, poetry, literature, murals and visual art. We believe popular culture is a reflection of the material conditions around (and within) us––a form of theory making and a method for understanding our world. 2018 gave us several films that echoed BLM, by making explicit its contradictions and tendencies. At the risk of oversimplifying, we can divide the best of these films into two categories: liberal and revolutionary. Each mirrors a material tendency that emerged within BLM.
