Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993)
Overview
The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life referenced the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the elemental static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.
Cast
Olamide Faison
Young Malcolm
Giancarlo Esposito
Autobiography Reading (voice)
Coco Fusco
FBI Files Reading (as Coco Fusco)
Spike Lee
Yuri Kochiyama
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