Seven Songs for Malcolm X

The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life referenced the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the elemental static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.

Director: John Akomfrah

Cast: Darrick Harris, Danny Carter, Martin Boothe, Byron O. Hurlock, Edward George, Tricia Rose, Theodore L. Cash, Olamide Faison

Audience-only score — full critic data not yet in the ReelXO vault.