Part of Doctober
BLACK ZOMBIE digs beneath the blood-soaked spectacle of modern horror to uncover the zombie’s buried and unsettling origins. Long before it became associated with flesh-eating ghouls, the zombie was a living metaphor for slavery — not a monster, but the ultimate victim of colonial power. A symbol of stolen agency was recast as an object of fear, while Black spiritual traditions were distorted, sensationalized and erased. Director Maya Annik Bedward traces the evolution of the zombie from colonial Haiti to contemporary Hollywood, reconsidering iconic films like WHITE ZOMBIE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW — along with archival footage, vérité scenes, and interviews with cultural historians, artists and genre legends including Yves-Grégory Francois, Mambo Labelle Déesse, Slash, Tom Savini and Zandashé Brown. Part cultural reckoning, part horror remix, BLACK ZOMBIE exposes how a figure born from enslavement, spiritual belief and resistance was transformed into one of pop culture’s most profitable monsters.
“Isn’t a genre fan’s focus so much as a cultural anthropologist’s eye…. A thought-provoking perspective — one that might add some depth to your next experience of undead cinema, however purely escapist.” —Dennis Harvey, Variety “Bedward visits Haiti, Montreal, Paris and Hollywood while deftly braiding movie clips and newsreel footage…. At this documentary’s core are the insights of its featured thinkers, among them the Caribbean literary scholar Kaiama L. Glover, the guitarist Slash, the Zombie Walk co-founder Thea Munster and the horror author Tananarive Due.” —Lisa Kennedy, NYT Critic’s Pick, New York Times “As much an educational resource to reveal Hollywood’s indoctrination in service of colonial infrastructure as it is an answer utilizing that knowledge to combat it in real time without the need for subterfuge…. Bedward plays with fictionalized reenactment to start building a new canon to replace the 1930s and ’40s clips exemplifying Western spin. She’s setting souls free.” —Jared Mobarak, The Film Stage
Additional showtimes may be posted on Mon, Oct 12
