Residue

Residue is a beautiful and meaningful film filled with deep character emotion, powerful images, and nostalgic memories. The film's characters are believable.

Although the movie is filmed in Washington, DC, this movie does NOT portray the downtown sections of the city (i.e. The White House, The Monument, The Capitol), but rather the sections of the city that show how black folks live and how they cope with gentrification...and Jay (Obina Nwachukwu) says it best: "these white folks are gonna paint over the city like we never existed!"

From the music (go-go), to the slang (he moved "out Merr-lin"), to the attitude of the characters...Gerima has done a great job in capturing the true black culture of DC. This film is necessary! #DCStillOurs #DontMuteDC

One of the best films on blacks in USA by a black director--his debut. Good visuals. Restrained and very magnetic acting by non-professionals. The film is about the gradual "gentrification" of Q street in Washington DC, not very far from the White House. (I have been a frequent visitor to the J and K street areas of the same city where the black population is in minority.) Q street was considered a black majority area. Land developers try to evict the black population so that the land/properties can be inhabited by white folks. The film rarely shows the whites, but when it shows their actions it is searing for the viewer. The whites take out their pet dogs for a walk and allow their pets to defecate on lawns of homes owned by blacks and do not clean up the mess even when confronted by home owners and instead yell profanities at the blacks from a safe distance. The final words are from a white couple standing on the terrace of a high rise residential complex who now feel safe that the black community is a lot less in number than before. The "Residue" of the title refers to the blacks who refuse to move out of Q street. An important film of 2020.

This movie very accurately depicts something that's not only relative to DC natives, but black inner city residents almost everywhere. Having displaced friend groups, not due to the "average" coming of age reasons like college or careers but having friends lost due to gun violence, or mass incarceration; I've not seen a movie so vividly convey the emotions survivors of gun violence, or white supremacy as well as this movie did.

This movie was very hard for me to follow, mostly because a lot of the dialogue was very difficult for me to hear. There were remarkable moments, such as when the protagonist goes to prison to visit a childhood friend of his and recalls some of the best moments they spent together as children, while imagining - I think - other moments that did not actually take place but that could have. But, for me, too often it was hard to hear what the characters were saying, or to figure out what I was seeing.

Is this a fault of the director? Or of mine? I can't say.

Definitely give this movie a try. You may get more out of it than I did. But I wish the director would rethink some of his decisions on sound and transitions.

I feel that through imagery this film shows how trauma effects all of a persons senses.