2.

The cultural and social impact of cinematography

Now think about a movie that has changed your cultural or social perspective about a particular issue.
Why was that? What changed in you after watching it? Did the cinematography work have something to
do with it or was the message that impacted you the most?

I am not your negro (2016)

This documentary styled film, narrated by

Samuel L. Jackson and based on the writings
from James Baldwin, renowned author and
social activist, from whose written pieces
along with endless footage of social
inequalities that have occured in past decades
as well as in current ones, demonstrate to the
viewer in just over 90 minutes what the
experience of being a black person in the
United States is in crude and horrifying detail.

The film could also be called a documentary,

since it arranges audiovisual media, not so
much filmed by a crew but by citizens or
common bystanders that happened to have a
video recorder with them, since it shows beatings, police brutality, murder attempts and
systemic racism.

There are a couple of other films that I could have chosen with a similar theme, like
Blackkklansman (2018) or Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), the latter one being an absolute
terrific movie which I also recommend wholeheartedly, although I chose I am not your negro
since it is a brutal depiction of the systemic injustices Afroamericans have suffered since the
first peoples from Africa were brought to the country as slaves.
I chose it not because of the brutality, but because it demonstrates how racism is far from
being over, that there is still a long way to go for people of all colors and ethnicities to be
treated as equals, that it doesn’t matter that this is an american documentary, racism exists
everywhere and that there is still movements and fights to be made in order to be all treated as
equals.

It is a transparent telling of the most vicious crimes commited by the american

government against its own citizens to deny them from their own basic liberties, something
that keeps repeating itself up to this day.