¿¡Soy lo bastante negro para ti!?

The movie 'Is That Black Enough for You?!?' is a provocative documentary that examines the history of black representation in American cinema. The documentary is narrated, directed, and written by Elvis Mitchell and it sheds light on the groundbreaking blaxploitation movies of the 70s. Numerous black actors, directors, and writers have shared their experiences, challenges, and struggles in the white-dominated world of Hollywood.

The documentary delves deep enough to uncover marginalized black films intended for black audiences that have gone unnoticed by the media and the general public.

The movie's editing becomes unsteady when it jumps back and forth in time, with testimonials that elongate the script. The script also places a heavy emphasis on black films prior to 2000, leaving the film feeling incomplete or as if it is anticipating a sequel.

This documentary starts out interesting with lots of historic facts about the earliest black movies that were made, with lots of interesting interviews by big Hollywood names like Samuel L Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg, Harry Bellafonte and Sidney Poitier.

The bad: but after an hour this documentary veers of into all sorts of directions, becoming disjointed and long in the tooth.

It is as if this director simply had no control over his urge to namedrop as many film classics as possible and then start analysing what was wrong with them.

Recommended watch for the first hour, but I fear not many will stay focussed till the very end, because this documentary unfortunately peters out after the first hour.

From Bill 'Bogangles' Robinson to Louis Gossett Jr. To Marlene Warfield to Denzel Washington (!), there are quite a number of major artists and performances missing. Yaphet Kotto is mentioned once, but his best performances ('Bone,' 'Report to the Commissioner,' 'Blue Collar') are not seen. Pearl Bailey is never mentioned and Redd Foxx is seen for 2 seconds. You would likely never know that Jim Brown and Fred Williamson were, in the 1970's, supreme sex symbol icons as well as icons of masculinity. Cicely Tyson's storied career is distilled to her Oscar nod for 'Sounder' and an appearance in one other film. Spike Lee's films (even his early work) gets glossed over. So, yes, I have some problems with it. However, I must admit that it is an admirable and sophisticated try. Should've been 3 hours long and they should've allowed the film clips to breath a bit more. A nice primer to whet the appetite of the film student. The initiated will find a number of cinematic holes and missed opportunities.

I watched this last night on Netflix, and found it often fascinating and informative, but sometimes frustrating, leaving me wanting to know more about Mitchell's views on certain films.

Basically, the issue here is that the film maker has decided that he wants to cover a LOT of Black films, which forces him to deal with some of them very quickly. One of the seven previous viewers attributes this to a desire on Mitchell's part to show off how many Black films he has seen, but that was not my impression. Rather, it's clear that he is fascinated with a lot of these movies, and intent on sharing his fascination and knowledge with us. That's hard to do in a movie, though, unlike in a book. Mitchell might have thought about doing what Ken Burns has done with some of his documentaries: focus on the most telling things in the movies themselves, and then provide the rest of the information in an accompanying picture book.

Books are good for annotated lists. Movies, not so much.

On the hand, because Mitchell sometimes seems like he is trying to be encyclopedic, some of the seven previous reviewers have criticized him for leaving out X or Y Black film or star. A few have a point, but others didn't pay attention. One complained that Mitchell left out James Brown, for example, which is not true. There is a very striking scene of Brown standing shirtless in a doorway, in all the glory of his virile, muscular, and very angry masculinity. It would have been nice to learn if he was offered roles other than those, but that would have taken more time than Mitchell had in this movie.

The same is true of some of the other previous criticism. Those viewers just didn't watch closely enough.

My take on this is that it was interesting for what it offered, but that it often left me wishing for more than just a tidbit on a given interesting movie. So, I guess, I would have preferred less encyclopedic coverage and more in-depth analysis of fewer movies.

On the other hand, I don't regret having seen any of what I saw.

Mitchell clearly knows this material. He should definitely treat us to an accompanying illustrated book, where he is not limited by time.

There's a lot of truths in here, but an awful lot of assumptions made, which is supposed to be the antithesis of this.

Lady Sings The Blues- I was young when my mom took me to see this in the theater. I was 8, but I was told this was an important movie of an historical figure that needed to be implanted into my young mind. I honestly don't recall the makeup of the audience but I do remember the seats being packed, and being angry at the end. My mother explained to me how important Billie was to music today, and how awful humanity can be to one another.

That's a pretty heavy message to lay on an 8-year olds head, but the message was not lost on me. My point is, not every white person was avoiding important black films and during the 70s, racism was being addressed and a lot of white people were horrified. Growing up in and around Madison, WI, there were quite a few black children in my class, and it honestly never occurred to me that they were anything other than classmates, and some were my friends.

As I grew, things like Roots, Blazing Saddles, Mahogany, Car Wash and stealing listens to my dad's Pryor and Red Foxx albums dot my youth and it wasn't ever presented as anything other than entertainment- my parents weren't 'white knighting' for black culture,!there was just pop culture and skin color had nothing to do with it.

Now, make no mistake, I'm certainly not saying there was no racism, no ignorance, stupidity, but not everyone was a racist hilljack from Alabama- it just didn't occur to us to judge anyone by anything other than their character and fortitude.

I find it a little odd that there's not a single reference to Roots- how does one discuss black film and dismiss out of hand this important contribution? I remember being a teen and seeing Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in a few buddy movies, along with Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal- there was significant overlap in racial viewing, and bands mentioned like EWF, along with other funk bands like Commodores, Sly and the Family Stone, Rick James, etc that had soaring success with as many white fans as black.

It's ironic that Poitier declined to be interviewed for this, and speaks volumes when the producers list includes conspicuously white names like Steven Soderbergh and David Fincher. I'm not sure what purpose is served by this doc, and what the intended consequences are- there's no amount of revisiting the issues that will change the outcomes, and the outcomes intended here aren't necessarily that of truthfulness, either. Billy Dee Williams had a significant impact on the genre of film, as did Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, the list goes on and on.