Got Culture? The Best and Worst of BIPOC Cinema

Written by Bethany Leal-Iyoupe

Thumbnail and Header Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash

Trigger warning: this article touches on topics that could be heavy and triggering for the Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) communities. 

There are no words to truly express how important it is to find movies that depict the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) with accuracy, specifically the resilience of BIPOC after years of ethnic cleansing, historical erasure/invisibility, and misrepresentation in colonized countries that caused generations of harmful stereotypes (*cough* Blackface *cough*). I speak from the lens of a mestiza Filipinx-Canadian. In this article, I will pick some of my favourite and least favourite works of BIPOC cinema based on my personal critiques of representation that accurately depicts, or does not depict, what happened to historically disenfranchised communities. However, my opinions about issues that I am not affected by, such as Black or Indigenous rights, are not as valuable as the opinions of the folks who have been directly impacted. 

Before we get into the review, it is important to elaborate on the term ‘BIPOC’ an acronym for Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, which was first used in 2013. This term became a common way to identify and demonstrate solidarity between communities of colour in North America after the death of George Floyd last year. However, this term is not used to conflate the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, as we know each culture has their own unique experiences. With that being said, I present you with the best to worst productions of BIPOC cinema. 

There’s Something In the Water (2019)

Rating: 10/10

In my first year at Saint Mary’s, I worked for the Ecology Action Centre (EAC) which advocates for environmental justice in Nova Scotia. The term ‘environmental justice’ encompasses conservation and equity for Indigenous and Black communities who are victimized by the government. In 2019, the EAC went to Boat Harbour in Pictou County to stand behind Mi’kmaq leaders, who urged the Canadian government to take action against the Northern Pulp Paper Mill, whose excessive dumping of toxic effluent in the region posed a threat to sacred Indigenous waters and the ecosystem. In another instance, we studied the history of Africville, a former Black community in the North End of Halifax that was forcibly removed and disadvantaged in favour of a heritage park. In the same year, we also studied Louise Delisle’s advocacy for the Black community in Shelburne who lost many beloved men to respiratory diseases. These diseases were caused by the government’s strategic placement of toxic landfills in the middle of black communities like Shelburne. 

Before the EAC, I was completely unaware of the detrimental effects that environmental racism has on Black and Indigenous communities and strongly felt, from a non-Black, non-Indigenous perspective, that we need to become more aware of these issues. And that’s where “There’s Something In The Water'' came in. The film explores environmental racism that disproportionately affects Black Canadian and First Nations communities by focusing the camera directly onto African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw voices in the present day.     

Available on: Netflix

Call Her Ganda (2018)

Rating: 10/10

Call Her Ganda is a documentary about the murder of Jennifer “Ganda” Laude, a transgender Filipina sex worker in Olongapo. US marine  Joseph Scott Pemberton brutally murdered her after discovering she was trans. In the wake of the murder, Pemberton was sent back to the USA, his home country, to stand trial. Eventually, Pemberton was granted an absolute pardon despite his open dehumanization of trans women, calling Laude a “thing” in court. Laude’s mother, trans rights activists across the Philippines and Filipinx diaspora have fought for justice in Laude’s case. The film goes into the history of colonial influence, militarization, and propaganda that commodifies Filipinx women as sexual objects for soldiers to violate. The film  brings awareness to trans issues, as well, highlighting that discrimination against  trans folks pushes them into sex work and entertainment industries to survive. 

Available on: Amazon Prime

The Hate U Give (2018)

Rating: 9.5/10

When I watched The Hate U Give, which creatively doubles as an acronym for T.H.U.G., it sent chills through my veins for an hour and a half. This film adaptation of Angie Thomas’ bestselling novel gives audiences a glimpse into the dangers of simply being a Black teenager. Starr Carter watches her childhood best friend, Khalil, die at the hands of a cop who mistook his hairbrush for a gun. The police killing inspires protests and riots for justice across the country that mirror this decade’s real-life Black Lives Matter movement. The film portrays code switching, cultural appropriation, and systemic racism as the root of gang-related activity, Black incarceration, and police killings. The film loses half a point because we need to acknowledge discourse in the Black community regarding colorism in Hollywood and the exclusion of dark-skinned folks from lead roles. Don’t get me wrong, Amandla Stenberg, who plays Starr Carter, is a wonderful actress, but even the illustrator of the book cover, Debra Cartwright, was disappointed by the choice in casting, saying:

“I wasn’t exactly thrilled [about Fox’s casting choice], because of the colorism in Hollywood and everything. I was hoping it would be a very Brown-skinned actress, because there’s so little opportunities in these big movies for darker-skinned actresses. I can’t fudge. That’s how I felt.”

Available on: Hulu

La Rue Cases-Nègres, also known as Sugar Cane Alley (1983)

Rating: 10/10

There are so many layers to this Francophone movie by director Euzhan Palcy. Ma’Tine works in brutal conditions for low wages in Martinique’s sugar cane fields, which are run by violent French colonizers. Despite suffering from a chronic illness, she continues to work hard in hopes of sending her grandson, Jose, to school so that he can leave the plantation. Another figure, an elderly village man named Medouze, tells Jose stories about Africa that give us a brief look into Africa pre-diaspora. I was also pulled into Leopold’s storyline: a half Black, half White boy who is never fully accepted by his father because he is Black and never fully accepted by his friends in Martinique because he is White. This movie is intriguing, insightful, and I would highly recommend it for everyone to watch if you can get your hands on it. 

Available on: DVD

Photo by Svetlana Gumerova on Unsplash

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

Rating: 2/10

I grew up loving Memoirs of a Geisha; in fact, it was one of my favourite movies until I grew old enough to realize how problematic it is. Memoirs of a Geisha follows the life of a young peasant girl named Chiyo Sakomoto who is sold to an okiya, or geisha house, by her impoverished parents and longs for the affections of a man at least thirty years her senior called the “Chairman”. Gross. Next, Hatsumomo is a geisha who is jealous of Chiyo’s beauty, constantly harming her and even setting the geisha house on fire at one point, because there always has to be an evil “dragon lady”. Finally, the actresses who play the main character and her mentor are not even Japanese. I have even had real-life arguments with White women who could not accept that geisha are high-class entertainers in performing arts, not sex workers. This bigoted mentality that White women adopt is influenced by media such as Memoirs of a Geisha that portray untrue “orientalized” stereotypes. 

To make matters worse, the movie was based on the life of a woman named Mineko Iwasaki (岩崎峰子) who told her life story to the book’s author, Arthur Golden, in confidentiality. She did not consent to having her story publicized, yet Golden betrayed her to make millions of dollars. As a result, Iwasaki faced death threats for violating the traditional code of silence amongst the geisha community. Iwasaki admitted that many of the events written in the book, and eventually shown in its film adaptation, ran completely parallel to her real life. So essentially, two White men decided to exploit and capitalize off of the life story of a real geisha at the cost of her safety. I urge you to boycott Arthur Golden and director Rob Marshall’s exploits and support Iwasaki by purchasing her true memoir, Geisha: A Life in the US. 

Pocahontas (1995)

Rating: 0/10

I’m going to ruin your childhood memories of Pocahontas without regret or shame. Why? Because we need to take accountability for letting Disney get away with this. We, as so-called Canadians, need to be advocating for proper Indigenous representation, especially considering the bodies of 215 Indigenous children were found at a residential school in Kamloops, BC this June. 

This story centres around a native woman named Pocahontas, who saves an Englishman (or colonizer), John Smith, from her father Chief Powhatan. John Smith and his crew of colonists’ “locker room talk” is littered with derogatory terms like “Injun” and violent intentions. There is even a song on the soundtrack called “Savages”. The whole plot and script are extremely inappropriate and further perpetuates harmful stereotypes of Indigenous folks as violent aggressors, rather than land defenders and the ancestral inhabitants of North America. 

Furthermore, the real Pocahontas was a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Woman (MMIW) whose story is far removed from the narrative pushed in the movie. At 12 years old, she was abducted by colonists for ransom, forcibly converted to Christianity, and renamed Rebecca. A year later, a much older colonist named John Rolfe married her in her “Anglicized form". Seriously, let’s ask our parents (and Disney!) why they thought this was okay. 

That’s a wrap for now. I will continue highlighting the best and worst of BIPOC cinema in the future, particularly in Hispanic and Arab cultures, which did not make it into this article.