A Thousand and One

 

Writer/director A. V. Rockwell

Rockwell on the set

A THOUSAND AND ONE       B+                                                                                          USA  (117 mi)  2023  d: A.V. Rockwell

Why you keep leaving me?                                                                                                               —Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola)

At a time when the history of people of color is being eliminated by the President of the United States, literally outlawing racial diversity while reinstating white supremacy in all levels of government, films like this tell an essential story, reminding us that in the history of American cinema, stories like this have NOT been told, and people like this have rarely, if ever, graced the screen.  Barry Jenkins’ Oscar winning film 2016 Top Ten List #1 Moonlight was among the first to be recognized for placing black stories into the mainstream of the American fabric, part of the collective consciousness of the nation, but this is an even more unorthodox subject matter, with the director describing this as a love letter to black women, somewhat reminiscent of Savannah Leaf’s urban drama Earth Mama (2023), which played at the Sundance Film Festival just two days before this one, both seared into our imaginations, where it’s extremely unlikely that many viewers actually grew up like the characters in this film, so the powerful message it sends couldn’t be more culturally significant.  Born and raised in Queens, New York, Rockwell attended film school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where this first feature that she writes and directs won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2023, made in a social realist mode, set in New York in 1994, with an aerial view of the Twin Towers, jumping forward to 2001, and ends five years later, evoking very specific memories of growing up in New York City.  Taking us from Mayor Giuliani’s stop and frisk policy, which was basically an excuse for police to utilize racial profiling targeting blacks on the street, which was eventually ruled unconstitutional, to Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on urban renewal, shepherding in an era of unprecedented development, valuing developers and real estate profits over the lives of everyday citizens (Mike Bloomberg Created A Housing Crisis in New York ...), making rent unaffordable, causing inequality to flourish, driving many minority people from their homes, resulting in large numbers of children being raised in foster care or shelters.  This film addresses those essential truths, yet skillfully avoids long-held stereotypes, fictionalizing one dramatic scenario, intensely following the lives of Inez (singer/songwriter and choreographer Teyana Taylor) and her young son Terry, played by three different actors from ages 6 (Aaron Kingsley Adetola), 13 (Aven Courtney), and 17 (Josiah Cross).  Initially Inez is seen in Riker’s Island prison doing hair for other inmates, never learning how she landed there, and when she gets released she aggressively recruits new hairdressing customers on the streets, handing out homemade flyers to people on sidewalks and in stopped cars, hoping to jumpstart a new life.  Amidst the insecurity of having no real home, we see her bond with a young 6-year old child, seen playing on the streets unattended with other foster care kids, visiting him in the hospital after he injures himself attempting to escape from his foster parents, where it’s clear this is her son, but when he hurtfully asks “Why you keep leaving me?” A Thousand and One Movie Clip - Say Bye (2023) YouTube (1:44), she is heartsick at having to leave him once again, deciding then and there to snatch him away from “the system,” abducting him from the hospital to start a new life together, escaping to her childhood neighborhood in Harlem, literally going underground to avoid detection and arrest, changing his name, forging new documents, where both their lives are in complete turmoil.  “There’s more to life than fucked-up beginnings,” she says.  It’s a brave new world for both of them, together at last, but having nowhere to go.  Complications ensue. 

A whirlwind and multifaceted film that excels in expressing what’s unique about the black experience, with a musical score by Gary Gunn, where viewers are literally immersed in this world, with the streets of New York assuming the status of its own character, vividly recalling Kenneth Lonergan’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret, offering a scathing depiction of a historically black neighborhood under siege by the police, presumably to make the city “safer,” routinely targeting young black men in what amounts to an abuse of power, before their inner-city neighborhoods are gentrified, driving ordinary families out of their homes, with black characters constantly feeling unwanted and unsafe.  The inhumanity of it all is difficult to comprehend, but when we feel it through the eyes of someone actually experiencing it firsthand, it’s something else altogether, more personal and relatable, as their perspective has been routinely silenced, yet this film offers a voice to the voiceless, becoming an eye-opening work that is elevated by this historical perspective, providing a generational portrait of absent fathers and disintegrated families that extends more than a decade, where the protagonists demonstrate what true survival means when there is no home and no idea about what it really means to find their own identity without one.  What’s immensely appealing about the performance of Teyana Taylor is her searing intensity, oftentimes seen in a rage of profanity, feeling helpless to stop the growing inhumanity that engulfs her, yet also having quiet, tender moments that allow us into her interior world.  The degree of complexity in the life of a single black mother, who is inevitably misunderstood and largely invisible to larger society, is what’s so essential about this film, where it’s hard not to be impressed by Taylor’s performance, so openly vulnerable, not always likable, with rough edges and emotional wounds exposed, flaws and all, yet there’s something about her steely resolve that’s just different from what we find in other films, as it’s more accurate, authentic, and psychologically astute.  While background information remains an open question, it’s implied that Inez lost her parents to the crack epidemic of the 1980’s, with next to nothing known about Terry’s father, who may be dead or in jail, but he’s certainly out of the picture, leaving her largely on her own to fend for herself, where putting the past behind her is an essential aspect of her mental stability, as it would be easy to get consumed by these harsh realities.  Her first stop when she gets out of prison is to a shuttered beauty shop, representative of all her hopes and dreams, where she literally has to claw her way back into the land of the living, finding few options open to her.  Using a street payphone (that has become obsolete in modern times), she calls upon her friend Kim (Terri Abney, from Jeff Nichols’ Loving, 2016) for a place to stay, but Kim’s mother (Delissa Reynolds), a kindly woman who welcomes Terry like one of her own, shows nothing but contempt to Inez, as trouble always seems to follow her, with a darker history between them implied, but not touched upon.  Instead Inez is in survival mode, desperate to find a job, which is even more difficult with a criminal background, yet persistence in the face of turbulence is part of her daily reality, having grown up in foster care where she was fending for herself by the time she was a teenager, determined to give Terry a better life, constantly reminding him, “I’ll go to war for you.”

Shot by Eric K. Yue, often moving from street-level action to overhead shots, with low-resolution archive footage adding a certain grit to the mix, where the time jumps are marked by inserted tracking shots over rows of houses and excerpts from mayoral speeches, as news broadcasts warn viewers of the increasing dangers of the Mayor Giuliani years, with explicit reference to the NYPD’s Assault of Abner Louima and the murder of Guinean student Amadou Diallo, where so much violence is directed towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the immigrant community, part of the socioeconomic distress put on black New Yorkers at the turn of the millennium.  Something of a counterpoint to Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) or his messy but deeply personal family drama CROOKLYN (1994), Rockwell’s pacing, adroitly moving through different time periods, creates unfiltered emotional jolts, especially as Terry ages, which viewers experience exactly as he does, like when he suddenly meets Lucky (William Catlett), the new man in Inez’s life, also sharing a criminal background, something not easily overcome, but Terry (Aven Courtney) gives them reason to, A THOUSAND AND ONE - "How We Met" Official Clip - Only In ... YouTube (1:54), both seeing a version of themselves in him, growing up in the same way, offering him a life they never had, and he makes the best if it, viewed as quiet, thoughtful and introspective, succeeding in school despite all the distractions.  Lucky moves in and out of their lives, A Thousand and One Movie Clip - Show Up For Me (2023) YouTube (1:40), apparently balancing multiple relationships, where one of his other kids lives across the street with his own mother, but this never pushes the envelope into melodrama, remaining free of histrionics while still carrying considerable dramatic weight, with Inez insisting “Damaged people don’t know how to love each other.”  A fiercely protective Inez and Terry are always at the center of the picture, where she has to contend with the fact that she never gets the life she wanted, always craving something more, but doubts creep in, where we hear her concerns, “I keep feeling like something’s going to happen.”  The title of the film refers to the number of the apartment they live in, where an early hint that trouble lies ahead comes in the form of a new white landlord, who promises major improvements that will never come, but this is the lure of gentrification, which can only kick in, supposedly, if they leave the apartment altogether, using a bait and switch technique where minor repairs turn into an uninhabitable mess, with repairmen expediting their departure by leaving her apartment without a working bathroom, so it eats away at them, like a horror film, exactly as it does for their long-neglected neighborhood, where this rampant gentrification, another name for displacing people of color, is at the core of the changes taking place in Barry Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy (2008), examined in even greater detail in the fascinating documentary by Frederick Wiseman, In Jackson Heights (2015), where in the course of a few years the entire fabric of a neighborhood can disappear altogether in the name of progress.  Featuring an impressive build to a powerful climax, this film is largely open-ended, with a stream of different interests coming to light, as Terry (Josiah Cross) grows into a young man, seeing things finally through his own eyes, where some of his questionable decisions are hugely impactful, causing Inez to remark, ”I love you a whole lot, but I’m really starting to not like you,” just a stunning admission for a mother to make towards her son, but the combustible world we have been living through leaves no easy answers, which is part of the beautiful mystery of the film. 

Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Mahalia Jackson with Mayor John Lindsay

Mayor John Lindsay

Lindsay escorted by Black Panther security

Chambers Brothers

Abbey Lincoln

 

Rev. Jesse Jackson

5th Dimension

Billy Davis and Marilyn McCoo

Gladys Knight and the Pips

Stevie Wonder

B.B. King

Rev. Jesse Jackson

Mavis Staples (left) with Sister Mahalia Jackson

Hugh Masekela

Sly and the Family Stone

Nina Simone

Amir “Questlove” Thompson

Hal Tulchin, 1969

SUMMER OF SOUL (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)        B+                   USA  (118 mi)  2021  d:  Amir-Khalib “Questlove” Thompson

Sitting on the shelf for 50-years, this documents the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of six consecutive summer Sunday afternoons from June 29 through August 24, featuring some of the best black musical talent for free, but overlooked as it took place the same time as Michael Wadleigh’s epic documentary of a watershed, countercultural music festival, WOODSTOCK (1970), which took place 100-miles away in upstate New York.  Wadleigh’s mostly white film received all the media attention, winner of Best Documentary at the 1971 Academy Awards, though some months later the West coast wanted their own version of “Woodstock West,” holding a free concert at the Altamont Speedway 60-miles East of San Francisco, which turned into an unmitigated disaster when the Hell’s Angels, supposedly paid to provide security, murdered a young black man just 20-feet in front of the stage as the Rolling Stones were playing, captured in Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin’s Gimme Shelter (1970).  While those films drew attention, this film shot in Harlem floundered, as footage was never edited, and was eventually forgotten, shot by TV producer Hal Tulchin using 5 cameras at what was then Mount Morris Park (later renamed Marcus Garvey Park), drawing over 300,000 people, designating the film “Black Woodstock” in order to garner attention, but no distributors at the time would finance a film, so 50-hours of unedited film sat unused until the project was turned over to Ahmir (Questlove) Thompson, a drummer, deejay, record producer, and founder of the Roots, best known as the house band for Jimmy Fallon, who edited the film, adding several current voices along with a healthy mix of concert footage, creating a musical stream-of-conscious montage on the developing black identity, assembling historical footage that provided the backdrop, helping modern day viewers digest just exactly what transpired that summer.  Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for a Documentary and the Audience Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, this film joins the 1972 found footage of Aretha Franklin singing gospel in church, as documented in Sydney Pollack and Alan Eliot’s 2019 Top Ten List #5 Amazing Grace, another film that sat on the shelf for more than four decades.  These revival films, for lack of a better term, take us back to a different era, providing commentary on the state of the nation at that time.  In the summer of 1969, blacks were still called Negroes by mainstream media, reeling from the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert during his Presidential campaign, the Reverend Martin Luther King, and black Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X, each one of which took something out of the spirit of the 60’s, where social movements promised to deliver a more just society, yet this never happened, instead replaced by the law and order rhetoric that carried Richard Nixon into the White House in 1968, with Republicans adopting the Southern strategy of exacerbating black and white racial tension in the South, taking advantage of white resentment over the Civil Rights and Voting Rights gains made by blacks, creating a polarizing effect still felt in the region more than five decades later.  A Presidential Party intentionally excluding racial progress may help explain why the 1969 Harlem Cultural festival was minimized to such an extent and so completely overlooked, as there were simply no positive stories about blacks at the time, a community that was largely disillusioned, as instead stories permeated around the killing of Black Panthers, lost lives in Vietnam where a majority of the returning dead were blacks sent to the front lines, massive arrests and incarceration of black people, where even on television blacks were continually associated with the criminal element, typecast as petty thieves, junkies, prostitutes, or drug pushers.  This may account for such radically differing views heard at the festival towards the heralded moon landing that summer, as whites were completely enthralled while blacks seemed more blasé, believing the money could be better spent feeding poor people in America.      

The film sat in Tulchin’s basement all those years until he died in 2017, at which point producer Robert Fyvolent found out about it and bought the rights, hiring Questlove to assemble a film from the massive footage, tracking down several people who attended the festival, adding a few commentators, including several of the performers themselves, giving the film a more personalized glimpse at the historical implications.  It’s not really a concert film, as performances are continually interrupted, which is the film’s biggest flaw, becoming instead a cinematic essay of historical context, drawing parallels to the summer of 2020 following the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter social protest movements around the world that arose from that event.  So the opening moments are a bit jagged with talk as it takes its time finding a musical rhythm, peppered with archival material about the social injustice of the times, but unless you lived through it, most people will have little understanding of what the 60’s were like, as women and minorities were routinely overlooked, still relegated to the margins of political rhetoric and speeches, not yet obtaining their rightful place at the table of American democracy, where sexism and racism were still the norm.  So this black music festival, an oasis of harmony and tranquility, went largely underreported, flying under the radar, as few whites participated, so it was never part of any mainstream media which still largely appealed only to whites.  Little coming out of Harlem was ever mentioned on American airwaves, so this film revives all that was initially missed, providing a modern era perspective that glorifies the pride and beauty of being black, celebrating black heritage through the power of music.  As blacks took to the streets after the assassination of Martin Luther King, creating a succession of infamous burnings in more than 100 cities across America, much of what was destroyed has still not been rebuilt some 50 years later, with many New York politicians fearing a recurrence of more uprisings on the anniversary of King’s death one year later, so there was a train of thought that these musical offerings in Harlem were specifically designed to prevent blacks from taking to the streets.  The contrast between the violent lootings and destruction of property with the overall peace and harmony of this summer music festival couldn’t be more pronounced, as there isn’t a hint of animosity or discord, instead this is one of the earliest expressions of black unity and love, a kind of model for what can exist in the future.  Because an open animosity existed between the black community and the mostly white police force, the Black Panthers provided the security, an East coast version of the Hell’s Angels providing security at Altamont, though a small police presence eventually made its way to the festival.  While sponsored by Maxwell House and the New York City government, without money for lights, the entire festival took place during the day, where the stage faced the natural light of the sun, always keeping the performers in the light.  That left the audience out in the sun as well, with many quickly finding shady spots, but most were left exposed to the sun, where the relaxed nature of the event was like an outdoor barbeque with family and friends.  The emcee for the event is Caribbean lounge singer and concert promoter Tony Lawrence, originally from St. Kitts, an employee of the parks and recreation department of New York City and a man described as “a hustler, in the best sense,” introducing New York Mayor John Lindsay, a liberal Republican, who showed up in the right places, and Stevie Wonder, just age 19 at the time, before he broke from Motown and became a megastar on his own, singing The Isley Brother’s “It’s Your Thing,” before breaking into a drum solo, appearing later singing “Shoo-Bee-Doo-Bee-Doo-Da Day,” where he ended up furiously playing lower register bass notes on the keyboards until someone came and re-centered his position back to the middle,  The Chambers Brothers follow singing “Uptown,” also B.B. King playing the blues, Gladys Knight and the Pips singing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” David Ruffin, a soloist breaking away from The Temptations, sings “My Girl,” with the 5th Dimension singing the medley “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” from the extraordinarily popular Broadway musical Hair, while the married couple Billy Davis and Marilyn McCoo are seen watching a video of themselves, marveling at how young they were, but also happy they were finally gaining acceptance by blacks, as hearing them on the radio many thought they were white.  The music is more in the background as Rev. Al Sharpton and others remind us of the fractious times, with the black community split between following the non-violence of Dr. King and the more militant Black Power branch of Stokely Carmichael that wanted a black revolution.

While there are a host of attendees and commentators offering their own perspective of the festival, where their voices are mixed into heavily edited footage, the stream of music doesn’t really get rolling until the gospel section, starting with the Edwin Hawkins Singers with “Oh Happy Day,” featuring Shirley Miller as the soloist, a moving and extremely uplifting hit that crossed over into mainstream radio, shooting to number one in the San Francisco Bay area, where it played regularly, eventually touring with secular artists, drawing the ire of religious groups that condemned them, yet they were extremely devout, preaching the gospel through music and spreading the spirit, finding a new generation of followers.  But the true star is none other than Chicago’s own Mavis Staples, a soulful force who becomes the emotional core of the film, first appearing with her sisters Cleotha and Cynthia along with the strumming electric guitar of Pops Staples and the Staple Singers, singing the lead in a rousing version of “Help Me Jesus,” clapping their hands, rocking the house, using the call and response style which simply wakes up the audience and fills them with a joyful spirit, with Mavis providing the commentary, taken aback by the size of the crowd, all having a good time, so she felt like celebrating with them.  As a popular group, they were invited to Folk, Jazz, and Blues Festivals, where every kind of music is heard in their songs.  Pops was born in Mississippi where picking cotton was part of his black heritage, where the songs they played is what he heard with his family growing up in the Mississippi Delta.  A group of gospel singers follow, where spirit possession is part of the black religious experience, differing somewhat from white Christianity (with the possible exception of the Holy Rollers), as it comes from Africa, with the body erupting with the Holy Spirit seeking catharsis and a peaceful release.  According to Rev. Al Sharpton, “Gospel was more than religious.  Gospel was the therapy for the stress and pressure of being black in America.”  Psychiatry never made much of a presence in black communities, but they did have Mahalia Jackson, the most influential gospel singer in history, selling more than 22 million records during her lifetime.  According to journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the first blacks admitted to the University of Georgia, “Gospel’s part of our DNA.  It’s deep in the recesses of our consciousness…During the Civil Rights Movement, the church provided sustenance for us, helped us march on, helped generations of people confront some of the most vicious, violent acts.”  She’s speaking from experience, as she recalls being harassed by white students at the University of Georgia, making noise and stomping on the floor directly above her, but she drew strength and comfort from listening to Nina Simone records.  The highlight of the film is the incredibly moving sequence of Mahalia Jackson singing Dr. King’s favorite gospel song “Precious Lord” along with Mavis Staples, who idolized Mahalia Jackson, where the opportunity to sing with her is filled with reverence and supreme admiration, perhaps the only unedited song heard to its completion in the entire film, with the musical backing of Ben Branch and the Operation Breadbasket Orchestra and Choir, where Rev. Jesse Jackson sets the stage, describing the exact moment in Memphis when Dr. King was shot, claiming he referenced the song in his final words, creating a pall of silence, with Mavis Staples filling the void, instantly taking command of the song with that soulful and earthy voice before Mahalia Jackson takes over for the next verse, setting a moral tone of power and conviction, eventually releasing it back to Mavis, who describes this as the biggest honor of her entire life, Mahalia Jackson in 1969 Summer of Soul - Take My Hand Precious Lord ft. Mavis Staples YouTube (1:45).  A conglomerate of musical styles are heard, artists that crossed genres, like Cuban percussionist Mongo Santamaría performing “Watermelon Man,” Puerto Rican percussionist Ray Barretto performing “Abidjan” and “Together,” the innovative jazz of Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach, or Hugh Masekela singing an adaptation of a traditional African folk song built around almost Brazilian percussion before launching into “Grazing in the Grass.”  This is the prelude to the incomparable Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul, who immediately sets the standard by acknowledging “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?”  Channeling black anger into a defiant song of protest, she opens with “Backlash Blues,” a scathing protest poem by Langston Hughes that Simone set to music, ferociously pounding on the keyboard, unleashing the indignation and fury of being treated like a second class citizen, before singing what became a black anthem, “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” finally reading a fiery musical recitation of an inspirational poem of black unity by David Nelson of the Last Poets.  The Bay area’s Sly and the Family Stone literally blew some minds, with his brother Freddie on guitar and sister Rose on piano in her white mini-dress and white wig dancing and singing backup, a predecessor to the multiracial and genre-bending Prince, as they had a white drummer and white saxophonist, something many had never seen before, with a knockout female trumpet player, Cynthia Robinson, performing the fist-in-the-air song “I Want to Take you Higher,” exactly as it would be done at Woodstock weeks later, unleashing a frenzied energy of unabashed freedom, literally dancing up a storm onstage, instantly elevating the excitement level to a fever pitch, while earlier they performed “Everyday People,” generating the largely ignored plea for peace and equality between differing races and social groups, including the global refrain, “We got to live together.”  Largely forgotten but deeply humanizing, the experience speaks for itself, as the event lays the groundwork for the formation of a new black identity.           

Postscript  

In the months that followed, a series of setbacks occurred with the Black Power Movement in America, as that same summer Stokely Carmichael fled to Africa to escape harassment and potential arrest by the FBI.  Just prior to the festival, 21 New York Black Panthers had been arrested and charged with planning a bombing campaign across the city to coincide with the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death.  All were eventually acquitted.  Later in December, Chicago Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were assassinated by the FBI in cold blood in a pre-dawn raid, with no one from law enforcement ever held accountable.  A year later, Angela Davis was arrested on gun charges used in the murder of a judge, also acquitted after a lengthy trial, splintering the movement, as the Black Panther Party and other black liberation activists were constantly harassed and deeply infiltrated by FBI informants, leading to a barrage of arrests, while at the same time they were vilified by the mainstream press, losing public support, causing infighting and violence while running out of money, bogged down in legal fees from the multitude of arrests of its members, becoming ever more isolated, losing public relevance, as membership continued to dwindle over the next decade.  Less than a year after her appearance in Harlem, Nina Simone left the United States, going first to Barbados, and then to Liberia, returning only sporadically to perform over the next several decades, becoming more reclusive in the years that followed. Essentially, the revolution that so many anticipated, simply never happened, suppressed by a significantly increased police presence in America, killing or incarcerating the most outspoken radicals, causing the rest to flee the country or go underground, resurfacing decades later, typically making plea agreement deals with the government.  By 1983, America signed into law a national holiday honoring Rev. Martin Luther King, observed for the first time in 1986.