In 2018, the Bay Area was on theater screens almost every month of the year.
Ryan Coogler’s Marvel blockbuster Black Panther kicked things off in February. With an opening scene set in West Oakland, the film touched on themes of black oppression and freedom while centering ideological divergences within the African diaspora—all unprecedented topics for a movie with its budget and global reach.
Later that year, in July, Sorry To Bother You landed in theaters. Boots Riley’s surrealist tale of labor and love tripped through Oakland—east, west and downtown. Riley imbued his experiences as an activist and artist in the film’s characters, who argued about money versus morals, while the film’s chimerical twists refused a comfortable pace to its audience. An Oakland story to its core, Sorry To Bother You struck a chord with viewers across the country, engendering conversations about an increasingly unprotected American workforce.
Indeed, Black Panther and Sorry to Bother You, along with other recent Bay Area films such as Blindspotting, Jinn and 2019’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco, seemed to share a palpable sense of duty to comment on social issues playing out in the region and nationwide. Faced with a rare opportunity to explore these ideas through the Hollywood studio system, local filmmakers told personal stories with urgency and purpose—but with mixed results.
Tempting as it may be to encapsulate 2018 as a defining year for Bay Area cinema, Riley, who is already working on his next feature film, views it as an introduction. “These are like the opening statements,” says the director of 2018’s local film blitz. “Then people start pushing the walls here and there.”
Tessa Thompson and Lakeith Stanfield in ‘Sorry to Bother You.’ (Courtesy of Annapurna Pictures)
In these films, a pursuit of universality complicated the challenge of telling personal and local stories for a wide audience. In Black Panther, for instance, the allyship between Wakanda and a CIA agent was jarring to some viewers considering the role of U.S. intelligence agencies in violently dismantling global and local efforts of black survival, including the real-life Black Panther Party from Coogler’s birthplace of Oakland.
Oakland-set Blindspotting, which came out in July 2018, stars Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, childhood friends in real life whose characters grapple with identity and police violence on screen. Leaning into Casal and Diggs’ background as spoken-word artists and musicians, the film employs rap, at times in a didactic manner, to tackle the Bay Area’s ongoing problems with gentrification and racist policing.
In November of that year came Jinn from Oakland writer-director Nijla Mu’Min. Though it received less fanfare than the aforementioned titles, Mu’Min’s coming-of-age story of a young, black Muslim girl is a rare onscreen portrayal, holding the subjects of faith, family and sexuality with care and warmth.
And this June, building on the conversation these 2018 films started, Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails’ The Last Black Man in San Francisco offered a parable of belonging. With Fails playing the eponymous protagonist, the film is set in a towering Victorian against the backdrop of a city that seems eager to get rid of him and its remaining black population. As if stifled by the burden of its own aspirations to make a statement on race and class, The Last Black Man ends up taking the easy, stereotypical route in some scenes and abandoning the course completely in others. Still, Talbot won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and like the rest of its Bay Area contemporaries, his film was mostly positively reviewed.
Jimmie Fails and the house in ‘The Last Black Man in San Francisco,’ 2019. (Courtesy of A24)
A forebear to this decade in Bay Area cinema is Barry Jenkins’ 2009 Medicine for Melancholy. Set and shot in San Francisco, the film’s quiet, evocative story followed two young, black folks betting on a new romance and livability in a city whose black population has steadily declined for decades. Jenkins, who lived in the Bay Area at the time, foreshadowed the localized subject matter that Bay Area filmmakers veered towards in the years to come.
Fruitvale Station, Coogler’s feature-length debut from 2013, was equally foundational to 2018’s banner year for Bay Area film. Through an intimate portrait of Oscar Grant, played by Michael B. Jordan, the film centers on the last few hours of Grant’s life before he was killed by a BART police officer on New Year’s Day in 2009. Fruitvale Station struck a nerve nationally. In a very American circumstance, it was released a day before George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin. (Though Grant’s killer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, he was released from prison two years before the film came out.)
Two less mainstream projects by East Bay directors, Jonathan Singer-Vine’s 2013 Licks and Justin Tipping’s 2016 Kicks, formed part of the same lineage. In their own distinct tones, the two independent films tell stories about the choices two young men make in the face of systemic poverty in Oakland and Richmond.
Oakland film writer Ashley De La Torre, who contributes to REELYDOPE, a local film review website, points to the changing landscape of film production and distribution as a reason for this increasing momentum in Bay Area cinema. “What’s impacting us is what’s impacting the industry as a whole, as far as up and coming filmmakers: it’s access,” she says. “You can make your small film and shop it.” Fruitvale Station, Sorry to Bother You and Blindspotting all found success at Sundance Film Festival, acquiring distributors after they premiered there.
De La Torre is also quick to mention Hayward-raised actor Mahershala Ali for his impactful performances in Kicks and in Jenkins’ Moonlight, for which he won an Oscar. There’s also behind-the-scenes talent like San Francisco native James Laxton, who’s been the cinematographer in each of Jenkins’ feature films. “As far as the Bay, we’ve always been integrated in the industry,” De La Torre says. “I think we’re just now starting to get more recognition for our impact.”
On a local level, the San Francisco International Film Festival stands tall as a source of institutional support through funding, mentorship and resources for Bay Area filmmakers. “By being able to create these hubs and build those connections, that sense of community really helps those especially who want to stay in the Bay Area,” says Lauren Kushner, the interim director of artist development at SFFILM. In fact, Sorry to Bother You, Blindspotting, Jinn and Last Black Man all received funding through the organization.
Now that several Bay Area films centering black characters have succeeded in the box office, it’s fitting to consider what stories might follow their lead. If, like Riley said, 2018 was a year of opening statements, it will be exciting if the next stage of this conversation carries more perspectives from women and LGBTQ filmmakers, and a confidence that national audiences can appreciate nuanced stories—hopefully, stories that can just exist without being weighed down by the need to explain their significance.
For his part, Riley is stepping into his next projects with renewed assurance. “We’re told an idea of how the world is and what the world believes,” he says. “Actually, people are way more radical than what we’ve been told.”
Copyright 2019 KQED