The Oscar winner took on the role of Nanisca, a general of the true Agojie warrior women, while also producing the film alongside her husband. But as he followed a little-known story in an African kingdom – with a cast of mostly black actors – Davis says it was nearly impossible to find a studio to buy. “It’s never been done,” he said on the red carpet ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “You can be a little afraid of something that’s never been done. But sometimes things that have never been done, doesn’t mean it won’t land.” Since then, the film has taken off — earning nearly US$2 million in previews before it even hit theaters on Friday. Along with this are the notions of Afrofuturism, the reimagining of Black history and the elevation of Black people and culture as something to be seen and even emulated – rather than the victims of slavery simply struggling to prove themselves. their equality. WATCHES | Viola Davis on The Woman King: ‘We can drive a box office worldwide’:
“We can drive a box office worldwide,” says Viola Davis
Viola Davis describes the long struggle to become The Woman King, and her co-star John Boyega jokes about the pressure the actress puts on Davis.
And when it came to TIFF, the Female King was far from alone.
Chevalier’s world premiere saw Kelvin Harrison Jr present the criminally little-known story of Joseph Bologna — a black swordsman, virtuoso violinist and masterful classical composer who rivaled Mozart and whom John Adams, the second president of the United States, called “the most complete man in Europe”.
A world premiere for Sidney tells the story of Sidney Poitier, described in the TIFF synopsis as “one of the most gifted and charismatic actors the cinema has ever known.” The world premiere of Dear Mama examines the rapper Tupac and his mother Afeni Shakur and attempts to reshape the story of both their contributions to the civil rights movement.
And it also received its world premiere of Black Ice, the documentary featuring Drake — featuring Black Canadian NHL superstars PK Subban and Akim Aliu — who both highlighted the often-overlooked contributions of black athletes to the sport (including introducing of slapshot) and the racism they continue to face.
“It’s literally Canada’s sport and we don’t know that black people have had all these contributions,” Aliu told the CBC on his red carpet. “I just hope that this will enable people to look past that and lift the hood and say, ‘Hey, what other contributions have people of color made to our society,’ and they’ll quickly discover that we were integral to where we are today ».
Kim Fain, professor of English at Texas Southern University and author of Black Hollywood: From Butlers to Superheroes, the Changing Role of African American Men in the Movies, pointed to all these movies as more than coincidence. It’s the result of changing trends in Hollywood, which itself reflects how society views—and understands—how we frame history.
“Hollywood reflects the activist movement,” Fein said, pointing to social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Afrofuturism, a literary genre that puts black people and culture at the forefront of science and technology.
“When you have a black writer, you have a black director, you have people saying, ‘No… we’re going to highlight black people who contributed in this way. And we’re going to show you things in a way you’ve never seen before,” he said. “We might revisit the stories, but then we say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re going to tell it our way and refocus Black people as they should be focused on these stories.’
Repeating the history of the black world
While The Woman King doesn’t fall under the umbrella of Afrofuturism — which, as its name suggests, often looks to a real or imagined future — Fain pointed to Black Panther as the catalyst for the genre’s entry into the mainstream. This film placed a fictional African society at the forefront of modern technology and depicted a nation ruled and inhabited by blacks as a world power. While this way of presenting a black community is by no means inaccurate — either historically or in modern times — Fain says, until recently, it was rare to see in the mainstream. In the early days of Hollywood, black characters and actors were largely invisible and when they were seen they were portrayed as either “slaves, butlers or maids”. This subservient role eventually evolved into the “blaxploitation” movement of the 1970s, which changed to show blacks as protagonists in films—albeit often through involvement in crime. From there, Fain said, a trend of black actors fighting oppression evolved into a “white savior” trend — where a black character is ostensibly the protagonist, though he really appears to be saved by a white character, as in Green Book, The Blind Side or The Help. And from there, another trend emerged: “trauma porn,” a genre seen primarily in 12 Years a Slave, Antebellum, and The Underground Railroad, where the focus is on black characters suffering the horrors of slavery or police brutality. . “What seemed to be coming out for a while wasn’t necessarily showing us as heroes, but it was showing us as victims,” Fein said. “It’s almost … retraumatizing us, culturally and individually.” WATCHES | Canada’s often forgotten history of slavery on screen:
Canada’s often forgotten history of slavery on screen
As new film and television projects explore the history of the transatlantic slave trade, including the new documentary series Enslaved, one historian finds that Canada’s role in these stories tends to be one-dimensional and positive. More recently, Fain said, black creators like Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele have been able to take power behind the scenes and make movies where black people take control of their own stories. This movement even extends beyond films like The King’s Wife, which intentionally put a black cast front and center, to another film at TIFF that subverted tropes in a less intentional way. Devotion – which, once again, made its world premiere at the festival – told the story of Jesse Brown, the first black aviator to pass the Navy’s basic flight training program, who was killed in the Korean War. While it still told the story of a black man fighting against a racist system while befriending a white officer who tries to help him, star Jonathan Majors (who played Brown) says he took on the role specifically because the script featured Brown to help himself. to rely on an external savior. WATCHES | Jonathan Majors and Joe Jonas talk about Devotion at its TIFF premiere:
Jonathan Majors and Joe Jonas at TIFF
Devotion star Jonathan Majors talks about the importance of Black people being at the center of their own stories, and Joe Jonas talks about being a part of such an important project. “We’ve been portrayed in a lot of ways. Guys, you know, in ways like, ‘Oh, we can’t help ourselves.’ No, we can help ourselves,” Majors told CBC News. “We have Jesse Browns who it proves that we can help ourselves. We have Nat Love to prove that we can help ourselves. We have Chadwick Boseman proving we can help ourselves. That’s the movement.” But even as the portrayal of Black people improves in the media, we need to be more careful. Cheryl Thompson, a Canadian researcher of black performance, says that while focusing on Black contributions and stories is good, it shouldn’t come at the expense of highlighting ongoing Black struggles. “It’s kind of like a mirage [this] amazing telling of black history,” he said. “They finally see us as kings and queens, but really, when you look at the big issues of America, they just don’t fit the silver screen narrative.” This, he warned, is something filmmakers will have to balance as the power and influence of the Black narrative continues to grow in Hollywood. (CBC)
