The new 007 conducts an agonisingly tense interrogation in the centrepiece of a three-part cine-prose-poem about
racism from debbie tucker green
The new movie from debbie tucker green is a vivid hybrid artwork, combining filmed theatre, location set pieces and installation-style presentation, with a cast including Lashana Lynch (fresh from her performance as 007 in No Time to Die), Arinzé Kene and Carmen Munroe. It is about the black
British experience and how it relates to
American history and the larger context of empire and exploitation.
This is a balletically achieved cine-prose-poem in three sections. In the first, with actors positioned on what appears to be a dark stage, a series of encounters and confrontations are laid out, sometimes along gender or generational lines, about the reality of violence and the ever-present threat from the
police. A mother tells her son to stay proud but also not to be arrogant, and not to court trouble. He is understandably angry. Another young man confronts his father about the civil rights generation and its failure to defeat institutionalised racism. Munroe has a tremendous spoken aria of spiritual defiance in the face of brutality.