Hey Cinefiles!
In the spring of 2023, I had the opportunity to sit down with Kofi Acree, the Director of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library and Curator of Africana Collections for the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University. We had a thoughtful conversation about race films and why it is important to watch history through film.
Continue reading for an edited version of the interview. The interview has been edited for space considerations.
Taylor:
I want to ask you about the screening and the post-screening discussion you held about the documentary I am not your negro by James Baldwin. Would you like to tell me a little bit about your inspirations for hosting that screening?
Kofi:
First of all, James Baldwin is one of the best writers America has ever produced. The film was really unique. It was based on a manuscript that he started writing. And the film I am not your negro was about three of his friends who got killed during the Civil Rights movement. Medgar Evers, who we don’t talk enough about, his role in the NAACP. He got killed for recruiting Black people to vote. And then there were Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., all three unique individuals. People would not see them all in the same light that James understood them. The film was unique within itself because it was autobiographical in a sense. When you watch the film, he puts a lot of emphasis on how films helped shape him and how he perceived film.
Samuel L. Jackson did the voice of James Baldwin but the words were James Baldwin’s manuscript, and I felt it was so powerful. And if you read anything by James Baldwin you’ll see how powerful this man was in terms of what he was writing about.
Film is a medium that we can always use to understand different points of view. He was one of our best writers when it came to the issue of race and racism. We need his voice today more than ever. I felt the film really did a good job of getting that conversation started up again. The idea to show the film was based around readings I’ve done in the community on James Baldwin. I think it was around that time I worked on a project out of the History Center for Humanities in New York. I got a group of about 30 people together and we were reading some of the essays of James Baldwin. So for me, he was fairly fresh in my mind in terms of his essays and the film added to that.
He was just an amazing guy, you know. I could talk about James Baldwin all day if I needed to.
Taylor:
Your interest in film; when did it begin?
Kofi:
Wow. Well, film has always been really fascinating to me. And unfortunately, too many people just run through film, but they don’t understand it’s more to it than just watching. For example, the film Spike Lee did called Malcolm X. It was based on the life of Malcolm, but when you watched a film you saw he used his poetic license to elaborate on certain characters. In that film, there’s one individual that Malcolm meets in prison that never actually existed. What Spike did was he took four or five people and rolled them into one.
Just like in the film, Harriet. The filmmaker (Kasi Lemmons) did something similar. There was a character in the film who meets Harriet who never existed. But it helped them tell the story. Film has a way of still teaching and inspiring while still being creative.
My interest in film probably goes back to when I was a child and I lived in Brooklyn. I was part of that generation that watched Shaft, SuperFly Cornbread, Earl and Me, and all these so-called “Blaxploitation” films. I call them so-called because they were good films and bad films, but to group them all with that terminology is to pigeonhole them, unfortunately. I could tell you about Sparkle, I could tell you about Claudine and there were so many films alike. They told the story of Black folk, you know, and some of them were like Spaghetti Westerns in a sense where they just put them together and put them out there.
Were some of the characters and events exploited? Without any question. But that happens in all mediums. You have that same exploitation in rap music. When you talk to some of these brothers and sisters in rap, they never grew up in that kind of environment but they use these experiences as business, you know. And they try to get their message across. It’s the same with some of these filmmakers.
But when you went as a little kid in the 70s to the theater you finally saw people that looked like you on the screen, you saw people that were in powerful positions. I mean, Shaft was a great movie, about this detective that conducted business. Then, other films had a double meaning to it that a lot of people miss. For example, the movie SuperFly was comical. It was about this Black man that was a drug dealer priest and he wanted to stick it to the man for the last time and get a big hit. What people don’t talk about in that movie enough is the soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield. The soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield is a character within itself. When you listen to the soundtrack, the soundtrack is so anti-drug. And so the film for me at an early age, was really eye-opening. Then, as I got older and in my 20s some really prominent documentaries came out such as Ali Mazrui’s The Africans, which is a seven-part series about the development of Africa from ancient civilizations. Then, there were the Eyes on the Prize documentaries about the Civil Rights Movement. So, I always saw film as a positive medium to get conversations started to learn.
Cornbread, Earl and Me is about this kid; The narrator is a young Lawrence Fishburne. He played “Me,” in Cornbread, Earl and Me. The key figure in that film is killed and the film delves into how his death affects the community. The kid had a promising basketball career and he was taken away. The film was not stereotypical at all; it just showed Black folks as regular people with things happening in their lives and how the characters dealt with tragedy.
So, I guess that’s a long way of explaining what got me involved with the film. I grew up in that generation where TV and movies meant a lot. I also loved watching The Bowery Boys; the kind of crazy movies that were done in the 30s and the 40s, The Little Rascals, and some of the horror movies. They all had captivated me in a sense.
Taylor:
Why film over music or visual arts?
Kofi:
Well, It’s not one or the other, it’s all. I mentioned music already when I talked about Curtis Mayfield and his music in the film SuperFly. I could talk about Stevie Wonder, I could talk about Roberta Flack. I can go about Marvin Gaye. I could talk about the artwork of Lawrence Jacobs. I might have more interest in one or the other, but I don’t separate them.
I think they’re all important because they tell our stories from different perspectives. If you come into my office, you’ll see a print that I have by Jacob Lawrence called The Library. It’s a beautiful print. I also have another piece by Faith Ringgold. It’s all good. It’s all important. Everyone should be exposed to works like those I mentioned. In fact, I believe it should be mandatory for all Cornell students to watch the film Agents of Change. That’s the film about the Willard Straight Occupation or what some people call the Willard Straight Takeover that took place on April 19th, 1969. Some people will come around to see it eventually, but we really need to have conversations about these events and there’s something about films that will get you to the table, and you can learn so much in a short period of time.
Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate Cornell grad, her film the Pieces I Am, I saw that at Cinemapolis a week before she passed away. I learned so much about her through that film. I didn’t know Toni Morrison was behind Muhammad Ali’s book. She was also behind Angela Davis’ autobiography. I didn’t know that. And so it’s just, these films give us this avenue to the conversation, and when you combine it with the book and all these other mediums it makes it that much more powerful.
– End of Interview –
Concluding my conversation with Kofi, I am left profoundly grateful for the opportunity to engage in such an insightful conversation. His knowledge and enthusiasm for film, particularly as it relates to the exploration and representation of race, has not only been educational but deeply inspiring. Through his reflections on James Baldwin’s I Am Not Your Negro and the broader spectrum of race films, Kofi has highlighted the significant role that cinema plays in shaping our understanding of racial narratives and histories. Speaking with Kofi was a reminder of the importance of storytelling in our ongoing conversation about race and identity, and I am incredibly pleased to have learned so much from him. His dedication to using film as a vehicle for social awareness and conversation underscores the vital need for these stories to be told and for these dialogues to continue across generations.
