I have been thinking a lot about legacy as I journey to create my film “Spit”. The legacy and trials of Black Cinema. Our struggle through this terrain of American arts “culture”, how we have been limited and still in moments have found ways to “signal through the flames” and create great pieces, but then in turn have had them suppressed by those with the power to do so. None of these film ring louder in my head than the classic film Chameleon Street. Chameleon Street is a masterwork of cinema, one of the best film debut’s I have ever seen, an non typical look at Black psychological nature and struggle within the American capitalist structure and one of the only films I have ever seen to show a Black person as incredibly multi-dimensional, even in a ways that we may not like but must embrace. Often Black people in cinema, even the cinema we create our characters end up serving either stereotypes “they” want us to fit into or archetypes “we” want to be comfortable with. Chameleon Street and its Director/Star Wendell B. Harris, Jr. denies all of it and creates a character so nuanced that in the end he is left as he should be….a human being. And its because he is so human this film even after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance was pummeled into obscurity. American Cinema has not shown its willing to accept Black humanity in all its facets. Chameleon Street is a energetic for father to “Spit”, and Wendell B. Harris is one of my hero’s. My homeboy Marcus Pinn at Pinnland Empire wrote a great piece on Wendell a few years back. Check it http://www.pinnlandempire.com/2012/06/what-happened-to-wendell-b-harris-jr.html
Mtume Gant 