Movielogr
Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993)
Directed by John Akomfrah
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.
Length 52 minutes
Actors
Darrick Harris | Danny Carter | Martin Boothe | Byron O. Hurlock | Edward George | Tricia Rose | Theodore L. Cash | Olamide Faison | Giancarlo Esposito | Toni Cade Bambara | Coco Fusco | Tiffany Nelson | Tiffany Tate | Wilfred X | Betty Shabazz | Spike Lee | Greg Tate | Hassan El-Sayeed | Yuri Kochiyama | Thulani Davis | Robin D.G. Kelley | Patricia Williams | William Kunstler | Benjamin 2X | John Henrik Clarke | Peter Goldman | James Farmer | Jan Carew | Malcolm 'Shorty' Jarvis | Peter Bailey