SCHOOL DAZE, BLACK ART, REVISITING THE '80S

Digital crate digging results in some tasty vintage footage

TISHA CAMPBELL IN ‘SCHOOL DAZE’

This past week was the celebration of the 35th anniversary of ‘Do the Right Thing,’ the third feature film directed by Spike Lee. As a result of the acclaim for DTRT and the noise made by his debut, ‘She's Gotta Have It,’ his second joint, School Daze, a look at a weekend at a black college campus, doesn't get a lot of attention. Digging through my old hard drives I found 'The Making of School Daze' documentary that Warrington Hudlin directed and produced. I was lucky enough to be an associate producer and I went down to Atlanta with Warrington to do the on camera interviews. We spent a week on set when they were shooting several of the big musical production numbers, so we got a lot of fun behind the scenes footage as well as interviews with Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, and Tisha Campbell and the rest of the cast and some of the crew. Warrington gave me a crash course in documentary filmmaking that I am eternally grateful for. It was my first time on the ground shooting nonfiction and it really prepared me for the gigs I'd have in the future. Not many people have seen this footage so it should be fun holiday throwback.

DIRECTOR REGGIE HUDLIN IN SMART BLACK PEOPLE

‘Brooklyn Boheme’ is my best known documentary about black artistic life, but I worked on some of those ideas in ‘Smart Black People,’ which is prequel to Brooklyn Boheme. Both of which were impacted by my book, Post-Soul Nation, published in 2004. In this doc, I weave together panels in Harlem and Beverly Hills discussing life and art in the 1980s with Reggie Hudlin, Marcus Miller, Lynell George, Michelle Wallace, Bill Stepheny, Russell Simmons, Warrington Hudlin, Kool Moe Dee, Barry Michael Cooper, Trey Ellis and Greg Tate. In the film there’s also a great photo by Anthony Barboza, taken at Spike’s office in Fort Greene, that connects the two panels.

To purchase or rent to go: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/smartblack...

As part of the ‘Smart Black People’ vimeo site, and on the dvd, are post panel interviews with a bunch of folks. This is me in the lobby of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture after the panel. I’m a bit exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

To rent or purchase copies of Smart Black People go to vimeo.com/ondemand/smartblackpeople.

My book, Post-Soul Nation, was the reason I organized the panels that constitute ‘Smart Black People.’ That book can be purchased below: https://www.amazon.com/Post-Soul-Nation-Contradictory-Triumphant-Experienced/dp/0143034472