FILM REVIEW: LET THE FIRE BURN

A scene from Let the Fire Burn.

Bloodhound cops

By Don Simpson

 

May 13, 1985 was a pivotal moment in my childhood. I remember watching the local Philadelphia news that evening, mesmerized that a city’s police force would drop two pounds of military explosives onto a city row house, knowing that innocent women and children were inside the building. This was before 24-hour cable television news channels were the norm, so the fact that all three local news stations were so fixated on this event for the evening was equally fascinating. News reporters were broadcasting live from the scene, giving their firsthand accounts of the events. I specifically recall that my 12-year-old self felt like I was watching war correspondents, as explosions, fire and gun fire erupted. There was an unreal level of urgency and mayhem. I had recently discovered the word, "anarchy," and on May 13, 1985, I finally understood what that word meant. This was total chaos, and it was all incredibly frightening to me; but what frightened me the most was, as far as I could tell, the local police force initiated the chaos and they had no control over the rapidly escalating situation.

 

It really was a war. Philadelphia police acknowledged firing over 10,000 rounds of ammunition. The leader of MOVE, John Africa, was one of six adults who died in the fire; but even more disheartening, five innocent children died. In the end, 65 West Philly homes were burned to the ground by the six-alarm fire. Even if the few men inside the MOVE compound were as dangerous as the police would lead us to believe, the working class people who lived in the other 64 homes were totally innocent. So, why did Mayor Wilson Goode authorize this bombing? More importantly, why did he give the infamous command to “let the fire burn”?

 

Admittedly, I was quite naive, especially in the realm of race and politics. Prior to that evening, I had no idea that MOVE even existed. It was not until years later that I began to learn more about MOVE; but the more I learned about MOVE, the more confused I became about the events of May 13, 1985.

 

Founded by John Africa in 1972, MOVE was a predominantly African-American communal Christian society that opposed science, medicine and technology; preferring a Neo-Luddite, hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The confrontations between these anarcho-primitivists and the police became legendary, mainly because it seemed as though no one would ever tell the real truth about any of the events.

 

The years of violent confrontations between MOVE and the police culminated on May 13, 1985, and even though a few local news affiliates were recording everything live, the information available to the public seemed inherently biased. This is where Jason Osder’s documentary, Let the Fire Burn, comes in. Twenty-eight years after Philadelphia became known as “The City that Bombed Itself,” Osder premiered an artfully-edited archival footage documentary about MOVE at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. Assembled primarily from news footage and video recordings collected by an mayor-appointed investigative commission, Let the Fire Burn avoids any heavy-handed narration or directorial voice. Instead, Osder presents the audience with a riveting 88-minutes of firsthand documentation and allows us to come to our own conclusions. Regardless, it is difficult to avoid the obvious roles that prejudice, intolerance and fear played in the decisions made by Mayor Goode and the Philadelphia Police on May 13, 1985.

 

This is a part of Philadelphia history that is rarely acknowledged. I hope the reverberations of Let the Fire Burn will haunt Goode for the rest of his life; but, first and foremost, I hope the truth behind these events continues to bubble towards the surface.

NEWPORT BEACH 2012: UNDER AFRICAN SKIES



Paul Simon in Under African Skies.

Sounds of defiance

By Ed Rampell

Joe Berlinger’s complicated two-hour documentary Under African Skies has, on the one hand, a sonorous soundtrack featuring Paul Simon and his African Graceland band. On the other hand, the doc deals with a complex issue: The role of art and politics. When the better half of Simon and Garfunkel flew to Johannesburg to record tracks for an album mixing American pop and the South African sound, he ran afoul of a cultural boycott supported by the U.N. and African National Congress against the tyrannical apartheid regime, enforced in those gloomy days before Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

Twenty five years later Simon reunites with his onetime African bandmates and the doc examines the controversial role Simon played then and its resonance today. In crucial scenes the aging Simon meets one of the ANC revolutionaries who condemned the musician in the 1980s for breaking a boycott intended to strangle the segregationist state. Simon continues to decry the way politicians use artists and insists on the right of talents to express themselves. Who’s right? Having triumphed over apartheid, the ANC activist can afford to be magnanimous.

In any case, the music, featuring Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Simon, etc., is extraordinary, and creates a musical mélange that’s the dialectical opposite of apartheid.         

  



AFI 2011: MAMA AFRICA

Nelson Mandela and Miriam Makeba in Mama Africa.

Songs of the free

By Ed Rampell

Mika Kaurismäki's Mama Africa is a documentary about the singer Miriam Makeba, a sort of South African version of Paul Robeson. Like her African-American counterpart, Makeba used her talent, celebrity and personal wealth to support progressive causes -- most notably in favor of Black rights -- and was made to pay quite a heavy price.

After Makeba’s songs appeared on the soundtrack of an anti-apartheid doc around 1960, Makeba was exiled for life from the land of her birth. The Afrikaner racists, however, blundered; beyond their clutches Makeba’s stardom rose overseas and she used her fame as an artist to speak out on the world stage, including at the U.N. during the height of Africa’s independence movement.

Relocating to New York, a political and cultural epicenter, Makeba debuted at the famous Village Vanguard, and was then befriended by Harry Belafonte -- himself a civil rights icon as well as a singing sensation -- who used his own influence to propel Makeba’s career. Along with other left-leaning stars such as Marlon Brando, Makeba was befriended by show biz’s progressive wing. Around the same time Makeba became the songbird darling of the leaders of the newly independent African states, such as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere.

As the Black liberation movement in the U.S. intensified and moved from nonviolent protest to its more militant phase, Miriam met, and rather amazingly, married the firebrand activist Stokely Carmichael, who had coined the phrase “Black Power.” Kaurismäki rather cleverly cuts a sequence that goes back and forth from a rabblerousing Carmichael speech to Makeba singing a defiant sounding song. In fact, she performs the latter via a form of scatting, making sounds by rhythmically breathing heavily into the microphone while accompanied by her backup band. (Makeba was also known for incorporating words and letters from her Xhosa indigenous tongue -- which Westerners call “clicking” -- into her songs.)

Mama Africa takes us on a fascinating odyssey to Guinea, where Carmichael and Makeba lived in exile -- he, from racist, segregationist America and she from apartheid South Africa – for much of their 10-year marriage. The film presents a fascinating glimpse into their life abroad and takes us to the home they shared in the so-called “Dark Continent.” Unfortunately, their divorce and the coup that ousted the leftist government that had provided the revolutionary couple with sanctuary are only indicated or mentioned in passing.

Kaurismäki uses typical nonfiction techniques, such as original interviews with talking heads (including ex-husband Hugh Masekela, other musical collaborators, relatives), news clips and other archival movie material. But in addition to the uplifting presence of Makeba herself, what really enlivens Mama Africa is the extensive footage of Makeba performing and strutting her stuff, at concerts, on TV, etc. And once Nelson Mandela is freed from prison, Makeba becomes a daughter for the return home, ending her forced exile from her South African homeland. Retracing the epic footsteps of Miriam Makeba, Mama Africa takes us from tragedy to triumph – and what a thrilling ride it is.


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