Afropunk: The 'Rock n Roll Nigger' Experience (2003)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

James Spooner

Release Date:

4 August 2007 (Japan)

Genre:

Documentary

Cast

Matt Davis	...	Himself
Mariko Jones	...	Herself
Moe Mitchell	...	Himself
Tamar-Kali	...	Herself

Also Known As:

Afro-Punk (USA) (new title)

Runtime:

Canada:66 min (Toronto International Film Festival) | Netherlands:75 min (Africa in the Picture Film Festival)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Company:

Afro-Punk

Honest Documentary about Being Minority Inside Minority Community

Afropunk, a documentary about black kids in the US punk rock scene, represents an honest voice of director James Spooner, whose experience as a minority inside a minority community (a black in a punk community or a punk in a black community) parallels the film's four main characters' stories. The documentary comprises interviews, the interviewees' lives, and their live performances. While the interviewees do not know each other, their experiences are similar: born and raised in a predominantly white neighborhood, being only one black person in a local punk scene, dating almost exclusively white boys/girls due to the interest proximity, admiring legendary black punk band Bad Brains, and trying to establish and maintain their ties to the black community.

According to the director, the film has been appreciated by both the mainstream black audience and the mainstream (mostly white) punk audience, as well as by comparatively small black groups in the alternative art scene. But you have to be neither punk nor black to appreciate the film; it has universal appeal to anyone who feels that they are different from what they are supposed to be.