‘Black Panther’ is not the first black superhero film
As the world gears up for “Black Panther,” Brooklyn Academy of Music takes a look at the movie’s forebears with “Fight the Power: Black Superheroes on Film.”
“This is a story about what led up to ‘Black Panther,” says Ashley Clark, the BAMcinématek senior programmer who curated the 28-film festival. Though the Disney/Marvel film, out Feb. 16, is “certainly the most high-profile” black superhero movie, many films preceded it, Clark says, especially when you open up the definition of superhero to include “mythical, fantastical black characters from five decades of cinema.”
From George Romero’s 1968 zombie classic “Night of the Living Dead” — starring Duane Jones as “the hero of the day,” says Clark, “radical in terms of what it represented in that time to have a black man playing that role” — to the brand-new “Brown Girl Begins,” by director Sharon Lewis, the festival includes a wide array of heroes of color.
“I think the whole world of black sci-fi is very new to the mainstream,” Lewis tells The Post. “That’s why we’re seeing such an outcry of support for ‘Black Panther.’ Which is so unlike the situation I was in 15 years ago, when I first tried to make my movie.” Lewis says she was told point-blank that nobody wanted to see a movie about a young black woman who discovers she has superpowers.
Robert Townsend, who wrote, directed and starred in the 1993 comedy “The Meteor Man,” was a comic-book fan who set out to fill a void: “We had Spider-Man and Superman and Batman and I was a fan of all those,” he says, “but we hadn’t seen a lot of people of color as heroes for kids.” Townsend will do a Q&A after the Feb. 11 screening of “The Meteor Man.”
Clark weighed in on some other highlights in the series:
“The Spook Who Sat by the Door” (1973): “It was considered so revolutionary at the time that it was strongly alleged that the FBI suppressed the prints.”
“Blade” (1998) and “Blade II” (2002): “They’re Marvel films that are just incredibly underrated. Wesley Snipes has this extraordinary dramatic range. And Guillermo del Toro directed the sequel.”
“Black Dynamite” (2009): “A dead-on spoof of the blaxploitation era, incredibly funny with a big heart.”
And, of course, Clark adds, “we’re all very excited about ‘Black Panther,’ which we’ll be showing starting Feb. 15!”
“Fight the Power” runs through Feb. 18 at BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St.; BAM.org