I was raised to judge a person by their actions.  

I’m just now realizing that quote may be Biblically inspired, but nonetheless, it’s beyond a saying, it’s a creed that I live by.  And I hope that as the founder of The Luminal Theater, that you all have seen that creed live through our work to present and equally educate the public on the loving, challenging, dramatic, action-packed, and yes, sometimes strange, work of Black & African diaspora filmmakers and artists.  

Because of how consistent we’ve been in our actions for the past six years in presenting varied perspectives on Black life through cinema and media, we don’t always specifically address the seemingly unending societal conflicts of Black life.  

Yet, this week, starting from May 25th, is different.

By May 26th 2020, most of the world started to become aware of our brother George Floyd’s murder by the hands of Minneapolis, Minnesota policemen.  While the now convicted ex-policeman Derek Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck, all of them are complicit.  And while the tears, salient anger, and protests flowed through Black communities in the States and internationally, with many ally/non-Black outrages sadly but definitely also fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic, the media, big corporation, and yes, even art house responses attempting to capture the zeitgeist of the moment rang hollow and opportunistic.  

While we’ve experienced some genuineness from non-Black entities (and to be frank, some Black ones who too often act colorblind), to quote our friend Kanene Holder of BlackIssuesISSUES, “The performative allyship and short attention span to address BLACK ISSUES is appalling.”  It’s too often very quickly encased in the amber of the moment. 

George Floyd’s murder is bookended this week by the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, which occurred over two days: May 31st to June 2nd and decimated the all-Black community of **Greenwood.  I was aware of the Tulsa Race Massacre since my early teens due to an effervescent wokeness in the 1990’s that I’m still eternally grateful for and totally riding, but over the past 20+ years found that most people had no idea it occurred.  It would take the first episode “Watchmen”, a fictional HBO show, to alert the masses to that reality.  

Once again, the power of media, even when brought to you with a ‘spoonful of sugar’.  

The bombing of Greenwood, of their ‘Black Wall Street’, resurrects the inequities faced by Black Americans much in the same way Floyd’s murder, Breonna Taylor’s murder, and that of countless Black lives constantly does, propelling Black folks into a constant state of fear and rage that affects us to our core and our mitochondrial DNA. Personally, it was the murder of Yusuf Hawkins and the arrests of the Central Park/Exonerated Five that still fuels me. 

Yet, it’s also the spirit of Greenwood, that drive to succeed and build ample communities that regardless of laws and ‘spirits of the law’, that propels so many Black folks, The Luminal definitely included, to keep pushing.   

Our actions do indeed define us.  As if The Luminal’s mission of centering independent Black film in Black communities was not central enough, we’ve presented numerous screenings over the years that speak to all of the above.  Most notably, we’ve shown “Wilmington on Fire”, Christopher Everett’s documentary on the first insurrection against a Black-led town, the 1898 Wilmington Massacre, multiple times (and as recently as June 2020) since its release in 2015.  We have also shown, and as normal provided key talkbacks on, many other socially-minded films that not enough people have been exposed to like, to name a few:

• “Whose Streets?”, Saabah Folayan and Damon Davis’ Ferguson uprising doc 

• Dennis Leroy Kangalee’s fictional but very true-minded drama “As an Act of Protest”

• “My Name is Pauli Murray” (2021) on the civil rights, women’s rights, and LGBTQ advocate whose name was lost to history, shown at our Sundance Satellite screenings

• Frank Lawson’s “Agents of Change” on how 1960s/70s college students fought for Black studies programs in their universities

• Cassie Quarless & Usayd Younis’ early BLM documentary “Generation Revolution”

• And our MASS EFFECTS film + discussion series (Fall 2019) in which we presented films that reflect how  mass incarceration affects not just those who are jailed, but how the Black family and community are affected psychologically and socio-economically

And we’ve notably been among the first to present these films directly in Black neighborhoods, and sometimes the first in the entire city - and will continue to do so in 2021 and onward.

I don’t say any of this egotistically, but to point out that all of us can be the change we want to see in our communities.  The Luminal began as a microcinema home to independent Black filmmakers in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, and has evolved into a nomadic cinema that stewards and presents audiences with Black film and media programming that speaks to their souls and provides filmmakers the encouragement and the audiences they’ll need to push forward with even more powerful stories and aesthetics.  

This is some week indeed. It’s as melancholy as it gets, and I’m definitely wracked with despondency alongside you all. Yet, I hope you all can join us in also being fueled to being a catalyst in exalting, sharing, and creating stories of the Black experience.  

Let’s stay free,

Curtis Caesar John
Executive Director,
The Luminal Theater

**Special thanks to culture worker Kolby Webster of Tulsa, OK for providing enhanced insight on Greenwood and the 1921 Tulsa Massacre