When Spike Lee named his production company 40 Acres and a Mule he meant to make a statement about American injustice and one of its worse offenders, Hollywood. But if you stop there, you miss the bigger point, which is, wait on the mainstream decision makers at your own peril. The day where they recognize the worth of our stories and our talent for telling them is not coming. Understanding this, filmmaker Ava Duvernay recently launched the African American Film Releasing Movement. Aligned with the black film festival circuit, she’s coordinating same-day, multi-city theatrical releases without any help from Hollywood.
Inspired by the do-it-yourself approach, TAP picks up on the theme and imagines a studio as big and powerful as DreamWorks Pictures guided by the sensibilities of black people. Much as Stephen Speilberg and fellow media moguls Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen pooled their resources and made movie making history, we envision a similar scenario for Black Hollywood with Oprah, Jay-Z and Will Smith as primary investors and other imaginative creators and talent nurturing movie making magic and running the day-to-day operations. Did Spike Lee make the cut? Of course he did. Can you guess who else?
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