A screenshot of cultural critic and journalist Touré in Black Folks Don’t…Swim, now streaming as a part of AfroPoP Digital Shorts
Photograph courtesy of Angela Tucker
Black Public Media (BPM), a Harlem-based nationwide nonprofit that has funded and distributed movies concerning the Black expertise since 1979, is making a splash this summer season.
Amid the Summer season Olympics in Paris and in honor of the USA’s swim staff, BPM goes again within the water with “Black Folks Don’t…Swim”, a brief movie, which is part of its earlier, irreverent sequence “Black Folks Don’t”, featured in Time journal’s “10 Concepts That Are Altering Your Life”.
“Black Folks Don’t…Swim”, which comically examines a number of the greatest myths and stereotypes about Black individuals, is featured on BPM’s AfroPoP Digital Shorts.
It’s the proper story in case you are seeking to moist (OK, “whet”) your urge for food for a method into an Olympics story by way of the humanities.
That includes author, tv persona and podcaster Touré and author, educator and media determine Melissa Harris Perry, “Black Folks Don’t…Swim” explores whether or not Black individuals have taken to the aquatic sport.
However with Black swimmers Simone Manuel and Shaine Casas competing on this yr’s Olympics — and Anthony Nesty turning into the primary Black US head swimming coach, main the lads’s staff — possibly the reply is a convincing sure.
Movie critics say it’s an necessary subject as a result of as many as 70 p.c of Black individuals have no idea tips on how to swim, and Blacks, ages 5 to 19, reportedly drown in swimming pools at 5.5 occasions the speed of whites.
“Black Folks Don’t…Swim” is directed by Angela Tucker, an Emmy and Webby award-winning filmmaker, working in scripted and unscripted movie and tv.
Current work contains “Stomach of the Beast” (director Erica Cohen), a New York Instances critics choose; “The Bushes Keep in mind”, a Webby-winning branded sequence in collaboration with REI Co-Op Studios; and “A New Orleans Noel”, a Lifetime vacation movie starring Patti LaBelle.
Tucher’s latest movie, “The Inquisitor”, about political icon Barbara Jordan, will likely be broadcast on PBS.
Tucker is a Sundance Institute Girls’s Fellow, a recipient of Firelight’s William Greaves Fund, and a member of the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences.
The founding father of TuckerGurl, Inc., a boutique manufacturing firm, Tucker mentioned she is “enthusiastic about tales that spotlight underrepresented communities in unconventional methods.”
“Black Folks Don’t…Swim” is now streaming (free of charge) on BPM’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwUKfbq-vGs.
