Watch at Home 02.05.2019

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask

Directed by Mark Nash, Isaac Julien
Film Movement Classics
1995
72 Minutes
United Kingdom
French, English, Arabic
Documentary, Biography, Black Cinema, Classics
Not Rated

Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask explores for the first time on film the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon's two major works, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, were pioneering studies of the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer. Jean-Paul Sartre recognized Fanon as the figure "through whose voice the Third World finds and speaks for itself." This innovative film biography restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary discussions around post-colonial identity.Isaac Julien, the celebrated black British director of such provocative films as Looking for Langston and Young Soul Rebels, integrates the facts of Fanon's brief but remarkably eventful life with his long and tortuous inner journey. Julien elegantly weaves together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon's work and dramatizations of crucial moments in Fanon's life. Cultural critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Verges position Fanon's work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own.

Director & Cast

  • Director: Mark Nash
  • Director: Isaac Julien
  • Starring: Colin Salmon
  • Starring: Stuart Hall
  • Starring: Olivier Fanon
  • Starring: Felix Fanon

Trailer

Photos

Reviews

  • "There is artistry in abundance in Isaac Julien's singularly ambitious portrait... He does justice to the complexity of his intriguing subject."
    The Guardian
  • "Immediately riveting and intensely thought-provoking...makes available to a wide audience the central role and legacy of this pre-eminent theorist of colonial domination."
    Annette Michelson, October
  • "Visually stunning and intellectually provocative, Isaac Julien's film is an eloquent and complex exploration of the life and legacy of this century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism."
    Angela Davis, University of California, Santa Cruz