Treacherous Trudy Smith was a bold and brazen Black woman who thrived in the Wild West. Living on the edge, Trudy made a name for herself by pickpocketing. Though little else is known about her, director Jeymes Samuel knew he needed someone legendary to bring Trudy to the big screen in The Harder They Fall. Naturally, he turned to Academy Award-winning actor Regina King.
Continue reading at Netflix’s Tudum.
What does it mean to be born Black in America? In the 20th century, writer and cultural critic James Baldwin examined this question through his words and experiences. Today, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates is grappling with the very same subject. While Baldwin and Coates have managed to articulate the beauty and pain of being Black men in this country —Academy Award-winning director Barry Jenkins has succeeded in depicting the majesty and fullness of Black life on screen. In his latest work —an adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins explores trauma, family, love, and survival in 1970s Harlem, a microcosm of Black America, that still powerfully resonates today. After all, the souls of Black folk still whisper to each other across generations; the specifics of our stories may differ, but the experiences are the same. Jenkins opens his film with Baldwin's quote, "Every Black person born in America was born on Beale Street, born in the Black neighborhood of some American city, whether in Jackson, Mississippi, or in Harlem, New York. Beale Street is our legacy."
Shadow And Act attended the Baltimore premiere of If Beale Street Could Talk, where Jenkins sat down to chat with Ta-Nehisi Coates —a Baltimore native, and the man he says inspired him to tell this story.
"I’ve never seen anybody shoot Black people the way Barry shoots Black people," Coates marveled. "There's a kind of lushness, a beauty that he bestows on Black people, that we are really not used to seeing."
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There is a poetry in cinema. A moviegoer might not realize it in the moment, but there is something magnetic about the way the dialogue and images bend and twist into one another, creating a narrative and allowing us to fall in love with a character, story, or even a moment. While the directors and actors are often recognized for their work —it’s the editors who work tirelessly during post-production to make sure that the filmmaker’s vision comes to life. Editor Joi McMillon, one of the only Black female feature film editors in Hollywood, is responsible for assembling Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning Moonlight and his latest work --If Beale Street Could Talk.
McMillon’s journey in Hollywood has been fraught with curving roads and alternative paths that began in the editing room for various reality television series. After years of hard work, in 2017, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Film Editing with her co-editor Nat Sanders. She was the first Black woman to ever nominated in the category. Now, on the eve of If Beale Street Could Talk’s premiere, McMillon talked with Shadow and Act about her career, how she approaches her craft, and why this is just the beginning for her.
“When Barry and Nat [Sanders], my co-editor, let me know that I was gonna be an editor on Moonlight, at first I couldn't believe it," McMillon remembered. "It’s one of those things where I'd been rejected so often on jobs that I felt were a good fit and the director and I had a good rapport, and the material spoke to me, only to be told, 'no,' a few weeks later. They'd say they'd gone with someone else, and it was interesting because a lot of times when people were telling me that they were going with someone else, they would say, 'He is just a really good fit,' or, 'We'd work with him before.' I was hearing 'he' and 'him' and I was like, 'Oh, this is who I'm losing these opportunities to.'"
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When it comes to cinema —and with mainstream films, in particular, Black women aren’t often the narrators of their own stories. In those rare cases when we are the main subjects in narratives about Black love or the Black experience, we are gagged and bound —relegated to filler material, helpmate roles or figures who solely exist for the male gaze. James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk refuses to place this injustice on Black women and with his film adaptation of the stunning work, director Barry Jenkins quiets other voices so that the Black female voice can soar.
If Beale Street Can Talk is love ablaze. The narrative follows 19-year-old Tish Rivers (portrayed by Kiki Layne), and her childhood best friend turned lover, Alonzo "Fonny" Hunt (portrayed by Stephan James) who become enchanted in their romance. Tragically, just as they begin to plot for the future, Fonny is wrongfully accused of rape and thrown into prison. Set in Harlem during the 1970s Jenkins’ film sweeps gently between the past and the present as Tish struggles to press forward seeking to clear Fonny’s name while growing their child in her belly.
Though Fonny is the one who must directly contend with the injustices of the American penile system— it's Tish and the women around her — her mother Sharon (Regina King) and older sister, Ernestine (Teyonah Parris) who feel the gut-wrenching after-effects of his imprisonment. It's these three women who band together on Fonny’s behalf, enacting a plan of attack to find a lawyer and get his accuser to recant. There is an overarching thread of Black feminism in the film. Though men— namely Fonny and Tish’s fathers (Colman Domingo and Michael Beach respectively) take action in the background, the women propel things forward in the foreground. It’s Sharon who dries Tish’s eyes as she weeps alone at night and travels to Puerto Rico in search of Fonny's accuser. It's Ernestine who uses her connections to secure a lawyer on Fonny's behalf.
Continue reading at Shadow and Act.