Najee Strickland’s Black Fist Series: Short Film Pt. II will premiere at a red carpet event June 17th at Fourth Bluff Park between Front and Riverside Drive.
“The Black Fist Series started out as a series of paintings I did based on social issues, propaganda, and things that were noticed or not noticed in the media focusing around Blacks and minorities,” says Strickland, 31. “And it expanded from there.
“I still paint, but I do short films out of that. I do podcasts, talks with individuals about their life living in America.”
He believes the devastating June 3rd, 2015 flood in Ghana didn’t get played up by the media. “Media didn’t say much about it. I don’t know if it’s based on minorities or what, but people who are shades darker are looked down on more than anyone else. That’s just with anything. I just wanted to shed a light on that.”
Strickland is also working on a comic book, to be titled either The Chronicles of the Black Fist or The Untold Stories of the Black Fist.
His first Black Fist film, Black Fist Series: Short Film Pt. 1, which was set to his paintings, was released in 2017. “We did that at the Memphis Slim house. It was just about a dad and his child making it through life. Or just going through life.”
Strickland’s latest film, which he made with an ArtsMemphis grant, is “based on a Black male trying to make it in America and express his individuality and creativity. It’s full of zeitgeist based on the Black inferiority complex.”
He got “this inferiority complex idea” from Tom Burrell’s book, Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority. “It’s like the mindset that Black and minorities think they are lower in society, but they’re really not.”
Strickland plays the lead in the movie, directed by Blake Heimbach of HotKey Studios. It opens with Strickland sitting in a classroom, waiting to get his test results from his Emergency Medical Service final exam so he can obtain his license to continue working at his job as a firefighter. He will have to retake the test if he doesn’t get a passing grade. “Then the administrator comes in and sets the results on the table.”
Strickland discovers he failed the exam because he cheated. “I get expelled from the course.”
He goes to his car and “transitions from deep thought to an emotional rage. And it leads him to put two of his fingers up to his head and pulling an imaginary trigger.”
The next scene shows Strickland in deep thought sitting in a chair wearing a bathrobe and socks and watching a stack of television sets. “Some have static on them, some have got something on it.”
But, he says, all of the screens show “different versions of myself.”
The film, which incorporates dance, music, and one of his paintings, stars Strickland’s daughter Londyn Emille and Jeanellette Jones a.k.a. Tbj, or Toothbrush Jesus.
This isn’t the final movie in his Black Fist Series, Strickland says. “There’s going to be one more. I just don’t know when I’m going to do it.”
The premiere, which will be between 7 and 10 p.m., will include performances by Tia ‘Songbird” Henderson and francis, the Truman, and an expressionistic dance by Toothbrush Jesus. A donation of any amount is required for admission.
Click here to see a trailer for the Black Fist Series: Short Film Pt. 2 event.
