Haile Gerima
Hour Glass (1971)
From L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema (1971-2006)
YEAR: 1971
FORMAT: Digital video, b/w & color
A young African American male rethinks his role as a basketball player for white spectators as he begins reading the works of Third World theoreticians like Frantz Fanon, and contemplates the work of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Angela Davis. Highly metaphoric rather than realistic, Haile Gerima’s “Project One” (an early student film project at UCLA) visualizes through montage the process of coming to Black consciousness. —Jan-Christopher Horak