BLACK AT YALE

Last year I was recommended this film by my good friend Chris on an episode of The Pink Smoke podcast and I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. This is truly a unique documentary that was ahead of it’s time. What makes Black at Yale so great is that it isn’t celebratory. Had this documentary about Black students at Yale university in the early 1970s been made by most filmmakers, it would have more than likely been a film celebrating the small demographic of Black students admitted to the college. It would have been seen a win. Instead, this documentary is a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of being “the first” or one of the earliest Black people to do something. This movie opened up a potential lane for more films to explore the negative side of being an early Black person to do something, but very few people went down that path. Instead - folks gravitated towards the stereotypical Christian-minded NAACP way of thinking where every early achievement by Black person is seen as nothing but a positive, and if you’re critical in any way you’re part of the problem. Sadly, this way of thinking continues to have a grip on Black folks now more than ever. If you don’t blindly celebrate every “win” achieved by a Black person then you’re a self-hating coon. And is it me - or does the “coon” insult no longer have the sting it once had? Nowadays, “coon” means everything and nothing at the same time. You vote Democrat? You’re a coon. You identify as a Black conservative? You’re a coon. You’re Black with a white spouse? You’re a coon? See what I mean? Anything can make you a coon at this point.

Anyway…

Getting in to Yale in the early 70s as a Black student is truly a major accomplishment. But once you get past that, you realize that you’re very isolated with little to no support or community. That kind of stuff matters. Especially back then. This is what the documentary hammers home. The film focuses on a few specific Black Yale students and their experiences on campus. From the jump you can see the mild depression in the students as they talk about their somewhat disappointing time on campus. Naturally they experience things like racism but that’s that not even the worst part. It’s racism and discrimination combined with being alone. In the south, if you experienced racism and bigotry as a Black person you still had a community of your own to fall Back on. In New Haven Connecticut, there were only so many Black people there at the time. And the Black locals with no affiliation to Yale would sometimes delineate from the few Black Yale students out of misplaced spite. So they’re facing forms of opposition from all sides.
This is incredibly unique to me because there has always been this slightly inaccurate portrayal of this “all for one” mentality when it comes to the Black struggle when in reality there were many internal opposing civil wars going on between Black folks during and after the civil rights movement. 

The problem is, the cautionary or overly critical Black folks that want to assess a situation before going all in are usually portrayed as "the problem" and are grouped in with the true snakes and sellouts within the Black community which is just unfair. 

Black at Yale / Chameleon Street

What’s most fascinating about this movie is that one of the subjects of this documentary isn’t actually enrolled in the college as a student which is a whole separate unique story in itself. I’m surprised Black At Yale isn’t paired with Wendell B Harris’ Chameleon Street more often. Not only is Chameleon Street based on a true story, but one of the chapters in the film involves the main character pretending to be a student at Yale. The fact that this has happened twice in life is kind of amazing to me.


Black at Yale speaks to my type of critical thinking. There are plenty of like-minded Black folks out there from all generations that would connect with this underseen gem of a film which is now on YouTube for free…

SUGAR HILL

I rewatched Sugar Hill in full recently after almost 30 years and it might be one of the most miscategorized movies ever. By the mid/late 90s, any movie that was part of the Black-American film boom at the time got grouped in to that “urban”/“hood” genre. What started out as essentially “post-Boyz in tha Hood cinema” (menace II society, south central, New Jersey drive, strapped, juice, above the rim, etc) eventually branched out to stuff like Deep Cover, King Of New York, New Jack City, Drop Squad, Dead Presidents and Sugar Hill. That’s a pretty lazy and borderline racist grouping of movies. Deep Cover was a noir crime drama. Dead Presidents was a post-Vietnam crime story. Sugar Hill was about organized crime. Drop Squad had nothing to do with traditional criminality at all (it was actually a response to all of the movies out at the time that sort of romanticized that stuff). If a movie had a predominantly Black cast and an ounce of “grittiness” it got called “hood” or “urban”.

It also didn’t help that a lot of these films shared the same actors, writers, producers and directors. Tupac starred in Juice and Above The Rim. Samuel L Jackson appeared in Juice, Fresh and Menace II Society. Laurence Fishburne starred in Boyz In Tha Hood and Deep Cover. Donald Faison co-starred in both New Jersey Drive and Sugar Hill. Bokeem Woodbine starred in Strapped and Dead Presidents. Khandi Alexander played the stereotypical drug addicted hood mom in Menace II Society and Sugar Hill. And a lot of the background/supporting cast from Boyz In Tha Hood showed up in South Central, Poetic Justice and Menace II Society. Sugar Hill was written by Barry Michael Cooper who also wrote New Jack City and Above The Rim. These three movies don’t have a whole lot in common but they were all birthed from the same person.

New Jack City / Sugar Hill

New Jack City / Sugar Hill

Menace II Society / Sugar Hill

These predominately Black films from the 90s also featured a rapper-turned actor in a prominent role and had high profile hip-hop soundtracks with a lot of the same artists providing the songs. 

In 1996 the Wayans brothers released Don’t Be A Menace In South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood which kind of killed the unofficial “urban movie” genre. But the damage was done. To this day folks will still miscategorize stuff like Deep Cover and New Jack City with Menace II Society and South Central. 

On one hand it’s quite bigoted to group all these movies together, but it’s also easy to see how, at a quick glance, one could group a lot of these movies together on face value.

I say all this to say that Sugar Hill should really be grouped in with other modern smaller scale mob/organized crime movies. It’s certainly not on the level of Goodfellas, Casino or the first two Godfather movies but it is definitely a great second-tier crime movie. Instead of Juice or Menace II Society, Sugar Hill deserves the same notoriety as Donnie Brasco, The Funeral or A Bronx Tale. Sugar Hill and Carlito’s Way are cinematic first cousins. Both New York City-based movies involve a protagonist villain trying to leave their criminal past behind for a woman. Unfortunately there’s always been this inability to connect predominantly Black films to predominantly white films the same way people connect and correlate same-race films…

In Sugar Hill, Roemello (Wesley Snipes) and his brother Ray (Michael Wright) are high-level New York City drug dealers. Roemello grows tired of the criminal life and plans to leave it all behind with his girlfriend Melissa in the midst of a gang war started by Ray. 

The story eventually turns in to a tug of war between Melissa and Ray. One side wants to pull him away from his dangerous lifestyle while the other side wants to keep him from leaving. 

Unlike some of the aforementioned movies, Sugar Hill is actually visually stunning. That’s not to say that films like Juice or Deep Cover don’t have stunning shots. But for the most part, the movies associated with the “urban” genre aren’t really recognized for their striking visuals. Sugar Hill is different. I don’t know how intentional this was but the wardrobe colors combined with the dark skin of the actors make for a nice contrast. It kind of planted the visual seeds for later films like Belly. Outside of just the visual similarities, the relationship between the brothers in Sugar Hill parallels the relationship between Nas and DMX in Belly right down to the level-headed partner wanting to leave behind their life of crime while the emotional unpredictable partner wants to stay a criminal. 

Sugar Hill is more of a slow burn than a typical shoot 'em up gangster flick. The explosive violent moments are few and far between. What we get instead are scenes of Snipes questioning his existence as a crime boss with a looming noir-ish jazz heavy score. This is mob/mafia/organized crime story that has more in common with other existential crime films like Sonatine and Hana-bi than it does King of New York. 

This is overdue for a proper reassessment.

SIDEWALK STORIES

I suppose the most alarming takeaway from Charles Lane’s Sidewalk Stories is that even though it was a remake of an almost 70 year old film at the time (Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid), the basic premise still applied to late 1980’s New York City. Lane never shied away from his giant homage to Chaplin but the bigger emphasis was on poverty and how bad it was even in the modern era. The cast of Sidewalk Stories is mostly Black so you could delve deeper in to race but a lot of the supporting and background characters are mostly white. Charles Lane has absolutely explored issues concerning race in his other works but I honestly don’t think this was his goal here. I think he was trying to make a general observation about poverty in the modern era and how it effects everyone.

There really isn’t much left to say about this movie after 35+ years. All the interesting and insightful stuff has been said. Outside of the race of the main characters there really isn’t anything different between Sidewalk Stories and The Kid. It’s essentially shot for shot. I don’t have anything new and/or profound to add.

What hasn’t been touched on a whole lot are the film’s influences outside of The Kid and the later films it would go on to influence. I find all that stuff interesting. Sidewalk Stories is a visual film and it hasn't really been looked at through that lens.

It [SIDEWALK STORIES] definitely came from THE KID - Charles Lane, hiddenfilms.com

The Kid / Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid / Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

The Kid /
Sidewalk Stories 

A common theme of silent cinema was poverty. Even if you aren’t a silent movie aficionado, close your eyes right now and think about the basic elements of a standard 1920s silent movie. Scraps of bread, dirty faces, holes in shoes, winos, etc.

Sidewalk Stories is really one giant homage to the silent genre.

homelessness was the thing that made me make the film - Charles Lane, moveablefest.com

Menilmontant / Sidewalk Stories 

Speedy / Sidewalk Stories

The Gold Rush / Sidewalk Stories 

The Gold Rush / Sidewalk Stories 

It should also be noted that Sidewalk Stories was a sequel to a lesser seen short film that Lane made in film school which was also an homage to the silent genre and laid the groundwork for his debut feature…

The Gold Rush / A Place In Time

The Gold Rush / A Place In Time

Sidewalk Stories was sort of a difficult film to track down for years but one huge momentary positive about the popularity of The Artist (2011) is that the director Michel Hazanavicius supposedly credited Lane’s Sidewalk Stories as a major influence. This brought some attention to the underseen film. I say supposedly because while Indiewire, Film Comment, TIFF, The Atlantic and more all say this - I haven’t actually found a direct quote from Hazanavicius himself. Film critic Ashley Clarke did note that Sidewalk Stories had a series of screenings in France in 2002 which is where Hazanavicius may have seen it.

Sidewalk Stories /

The Artists

Sidewalk Stories /

The Artists

Lane would eventually acknowledge The Artist and it's similarities to his movie...

Now that Sidewalk Stories is finally on a proper blu-ray you should check it out if you haven’t…