We Will Turn Our Madness Into Flowers When We Awaken
By GL Harris, Blogger-in-Residence
“The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and passion of a very few people.”
The Sleeping Negro is a cautionary tale about the dangers of the unconscious. We are asleep. The everyman, or Man, in Skinner Myers’ award-winning film admonishes us to awaken.
“The goals for my work are to refuse the reality of white supremacy, use my cinema as a weapon, and to create a new rebellious cinematic language for black stories, which is rooted in our constant struggle for freedom,” Myers said.
Man is a 35-year-old black man living in Los Angeles who wakes up on his birthday and ponders what it means to be black in today’s world. His wounded, fearful psyche manifests a doppelgänger, a mirror image of Man. Eventually he faces his moral dilemma to forge a new way.
The film opened the 29th New York African Diaspora International Film Festival, on November 26th. It world premiered at SlamDance Film Festival, opened the Washington, DC ADIFF, and won the FIPRESCI International Film Critics Award of the International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg.
“The audiences in those venues were sensitive to the anguish conveyed in the main character. We are living in times heavy with inequalities, arbitrariness and fear,” said Dr. Reinaldo Barroso-Spech, Co-founder and Co-director of the NYADIFF. “There’s a universal tone in the film that sensitive audiences get quickly.”
Completed ahead of the lock down due to the global pandemic crisis of 2020, the film’s trajectory has been incredible—a validation and vindication of the auteur’s art and vision.
“This film was birthed out of my desire to make a feature narrative that would speak on my fears of living as a black man in America,” Myers wrote in his director’s statement. “I have often played by the rules of society only to find that as a black man I’ve still had to deal with racial injustice based off the color of my skin.”
Black men continue to be subject to, modern day, lynching in the United States. Routine traffic stops have become stressors as filmed unlawful executions by law enforcement are continually replayed across all media—social, network, alternative and print. The systems like lynching, assault or other fear-based controls derive from the enslavement of Africans.
“Black people have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and they may not even know it,” wrote David Love, for the Atlanta Black Star, in his article on intergenerational trauma that might affect DNA.
Symptoms that relate to race-based trauma in African-Americans may include fear, anxiety, paranoia, suspicion, and excessive worries about the safety of family and friends,” offered Dr. Monica Williams, a clinical psychologist, in Love’s article.
Archival black and white footage show southern white segregationists speaking about the “Negro’s” inferiority and the history books that taught this system. This and other films clips are interwoven.
Skinner’s short film about Frank Embree, a black man accused of raping a 14-year-old white girl, is a reminder of what can happen, at any time. A forced confession, after prolonged torture, was enough to justify Embree’s lynching by white vigilantes.
“When I saw these photos, I felt like Frank was speaking to me,” Skinner said. He went home and wrote a journal entry that led to the 7 ½ minute film, that Man watches on his tele-vision.
An extraordinary cast including Friend, played by Nican Robinson, who shows up as a childhood friend and offers a counterpoint to Man’s frustrations and setbacks, as he smokes a joint. The white girlfriend, Woman, played by Julie McNiven brings a stunning performance. She reveals the residual racism in the couple’s failing relationship on the eve of their engagement announcement. The moral dilemma, illegal eviction of Black people so their neighborhood can be gentrified by a greedy corporate enterprise, is introduced by Boss, played by David Fumero. He is Myer’s real-life friend who convincingly blackmails Man into carrying out the misdeed.
Rae Dawn Chong plays the older Black Woman whose misplaced trust in her nephew, Friend, sets up the final scene and climax. She opens her door dragging an oxygen tank, with a cigarette in her hand. Her frail appearance belies her feistiness as she attempts to retain her property and her dignity.
Black families are in recovery. Hurt people hurt people. The Friend’s trauma is deeply felt at the film’s ending. It may take multiple viewings to understand more fully this blunt yet paradoxically sensitive and brave film.
I had wanted to see a more awakened Negro in this cinematic exploration. But that is not the film’s premise. I believe, the premise is we close our eyes to the constructs, overlays and systems appearing real but are not. Maybe, we could build a world where everyone is truly waking. And, to paraphrase Alice Walker’s quote, we can turn our madness into flowers.
Directed by Skinner Myers, United States, 2021, 73 min, drama, English