How 1970s flash cards inspired a Sundance winner.
By Andrew Blackwell Supervising Editor, Op-Docs |
In 1970, an educational publisher in Chicago called the Society for Visual Education released a set of alphabet flash cards centered around images of Black children. In a world of (white) "Dick and Jane" books, the Black ABCs were a forward-thinking teaching tool, designed to empower Black youth by having their earliest educational experiences reflect their own community and family. |
What the creators of the Black ABCs may not have imagined, though, was the myriad ways their project would seep into the psyche of generations of children — and how that might be expressed decades later. |
This week we published the Sundance-winning Op-Doc "Don't Go Tellin' Your Momma," by the musician Topaz Jones and the directing duo rubberband. In it, Jones reimagines the Black ABCs — "C is for Cool" has been replaced with "C is for Code Switching" — as a way to explore his memories of coming of age in suburban N.J., and the parts of his education that weren't limited to school. As Jones puts it, "this project is about all of the teachers I've met, tests I've taken and lessons I've received that didn't occur between 8 a.m. and 2:33 p.m. on a weekday, for better or for worse." |
The short film also features music from Jones's album of the same name. The result is a kaleidoscope of visual imagination and memorable new tracks (I've been listening to "Sourbelts" all summer) that takes the craft of essay filmmaking to intriguing new places. Fifty years after its release, the Black ABCs has crossed over from an act of representation to a means of self-expression — or as the filmmakers put it, an attempt to create "a Topaz-shaped hologram." |
| WATCH "DON'T GO TELLIN' YOUR MOMMA" | | |
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