As an Act of Protest

the cinematic protest against racism that became a cult classic & personal disaster...

"Raw, provocative, and demanding."

       Cara Buckley, The Miami Herald June 17, 2002

From gas masks/veins/

red, and stages. 

Eyes/hands,

canted angles,

we've made the time & place to breathe in & breathe out...

-- "the flickers on my wall" (2002)

UPDATE: Commemorating the 10 Year anniversary of AS AN ACT OF PROTEST, a restored Director's Cut along with original production notes and essays on the film will be re-released and made available to the public since its theatrical premiere in 2002.  Executive Producer Chris Romero has personally overseen the new approach to celebrating this guerilla fillmaking landmark and has worked closely with Dennis Leroy Kangalee to insure the integrity and original vision of his film as he begins to make it available online for the first time.  Check in for updates!!

This experimental movie from 2001 is a clear line in the sand which demands the eradication of racism & police brutality and seems all the more, creepingly, relevant now (Particularly in light of the execution of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones by Detroit police). Shot on the first Canon XL-1 on the cusp of the so-called "digital revolution", this 144-minute feature film was not only representative of a new "urban-guerilla cinema", but a personal one as well.  It was an artistic response to the rampant police brutality under the Giuliani administration in the 1990's, which culminated in the murder of Amadou Diallo in a hail of 41 bullets by four white NYPD officers.  Although well regarded and appreciated in certain art circles and progressive crowds, the film garnered some positive critical attention, but was not only a massive commercial failure -- but a social one as well.  Especially after 9/11, when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was considered a "hero".  Misunderstood, deemed too long, too shrill, too angry, and not "hopeful" enough -- the movie died before it was born.  And with it, a great deal of the Nomad Junkie's pride. 

Wildly ambitious and supremely flawed, what the movie lacks in formal technique it makes up with style and passion.  The result is an exhaustive blend of satire, tragedy, and B Movie Horror.  Acerbic, urgent, and emotionally arresting at times -- it deserves repeated viewings and the opportunity to be re-discovered. 

The movie follows a young black actor's "stations-of-the-cross" journey to escape the psychological torture of racism by searching for ways to counter the effects of colonization and police brutality before they destroy him. Like Hamlet,  Cairo Medina asks if it is nobler to suffer or put an end to the oppressive forces around oneself?

As an Act of Protest is one of the underrated gems of the American independent film movement and was Dennis Leroy Kangalee's last major work before his self-imposed exile in 2005...where he re-emerged in Europe as "The Nomad Junkie." 

Boasting excellent performances, strong writing, and radical editing, it was Dennis Leroy Kangalee's first movie and was made as if he knew it would be his one and only.

"While watching As an Act of Protest, as was true in a Cassavetes film, I felt as though the principal actors weren't so much acting as they were pouring out before the camera, depictions of the way people really behave...it is in the scenes where Abner and Cairo discuss with each other, their rage as African American men, that the film is so compelling."

- Hugh Pearson, author of Shadow of a Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America

"...Through its frontal attack, it lets the audience seek solutions rather than presenting them as easy answers...The performances are solid--with the lead actors turning in gut-wrenching reality...It is so refreshing to see a movie that is raw, real--sweats--without glitzy special effects or pablum solutions."

- Brent Buell, NY

Filmmaker/Educator/Prison Arts Instructor (buell28@aol.com) 

www.imdb.com

AUTHOR'S STATEMENT

As an Act of Protest was the second greatest romance of my life. 

It also nearly ended my life. 

It was my greatest disaster, nearly ruined me in every way: professionally, creatively, socially, spiritually, psychologically, physically...Where some filmmakers end up emotionally -- I started off.  Protest was the culmination of my kamikaze-crash & burn-directing career (17-24) and my years as an actor.  Even by the time I was 21 and full of vigor I was a gypsy -- roaming from one theatrical boundary to another. 

Disenchanted with the lack of spirituality, anarchy, consciousness, and craetivity--I alienated my mainstream 'mentors' and gladly accepted the Juilliard School's expulsion.  Of course, an agent, representation, a manager -- would have helped but it was at Juilliard that I realized who I was and what I most certainly was not going to be.  Today, in my 30's I haven't the foggiest notion of who I am, but I still cling on to what I know I am not. 

 A robot is one of them. 

A bootlicker is another. 

Someone intent on "pleasing an audience" is somewhere on the list as well.

I went to Juilliard because I wasn't accepted anywhere else and when I was 18 I still had the idea of being a classical actor.  However, as an actor, I rarely said the words I wanted to, expressed an aspect of myself, or addressed a feeling or idea that obsessed me.  My problem was that I may have been perceived as a "natural performer" but cared more about how I felt as opposed to how the character felt or who he was.  That is a huge problem for a traditional actor and it betrays the playwright.    And I found myself being attracted and influenced by more writers and musicians and painters as opposed to "actors."   I did, however, have a great love for the Living Theater and Black Arts Movement and Circle Rep and Steppenwolf and a lot of the 1960's-1970's countercultural artistic movements.  The problem was that by 1997, there was ONE culture:  MAIN STREET.  And the Internet Age quickly followed suit, arranging us all in the same line, the same row...so we all like everything.  

I have always believed that every generation must fulfill its destiny or betray it, like Fanon said.  We are responsible for expressing the torment and joy of our times. 

I suppose it was a natural evolution to become a more creative artist as opposed to merely interpretive.  And when of course I found the theater disenchanting, I realized I would have to start writing my own work.  It was just a matter of time and building up the guts, having the courage to go at alone in a cage and beat the madness and honesty out of me.  What did I want to say?  Get it out!

I've always written, I've always told stories.  Some were real, some weren't. But all were true.  And the best ones are always sincere.  Racism is something I have never had any tolerance for and I have a low threshold for it, lower than most people.  It makes my blood boil and I knew I had to write something -- directly -- like a rap song about what was bothering me. 

Anna Freud once wrote "If I prick you and you do not say ouch, something is wrong with you."  I can't remember where I read that -- but that sharp statement has always resonated with me.  I wanted to make a film that was less a "movie" or more akin to an album, a collection of protest songs.  Having been influenced early on from artists such as Phil Ochs, early Dylan, Bertolt Brecht, James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka -- it only seemed natural that my political inclinations, my disapproval and anger in how we live and die in our society -- would inform my art.  My early directing projects were perhaps too heavy-handed, but I would never say they eschewed artistic consideration.  Sure, some of it may have been provocative -- but an arresting image does well when it reveals something deeper.  When the soul lunges and the heart coils and the blood beats in your temple -- you know it is visceral and it is real.  It is love.  It is rock and roll.  It is dance.  It is celebration.  It is freedom. 

I wanted to make a movie that sprang across the jungle-gym of my mind.  I wanted to cast a net over the mania of my fervor, my discontent with our status-quo, my acceptance of a racist world and an oppressive society.   I wanted to do it with personal and colorful characters, people who were real to me, or were parts of me -- and I wanted to let it rip.  And I did, almost to my own detriment.  But you can never be too personal.  If anything is special about Protest -- it is that it's one of the few movies whose main characters actually feel and believe everything they're saying. Singers are liable to get stomped on when they sing words they don't believe.  Despite its fictitious grandeur, it should be no different for the actor!

I wanted to express the angst of the aftermath of the Amadou Diallo murder and I wanted to put my anger to use.  I did not pick up a gun.  I did not burn down a village.  I did not smash windows.  I wrote a script and a kind of spiritual autobiography of who I was at the time.  It was cop out -- but a beautiful one.

The movie took a year to make.  I spent a month shooting and nearly eight months editing.  I finished the first cut days before 9/11, I was out on North 7th in Williamsburg where my editor lived and I remember walking all the way down to Bedford each night to the L train and not seeing a soul in sight .  And it was beautiful.  I could re-cut and play out scenes in my head and not be distracted, disturbed, or annoyed by anyone with a latte or a car-pool or fleet of backpacks.    I was also abusing a great deal of drugs, which I do not recommend for any filmmaker.  When you're coked up, it's not that you lose perspective or nuance or any of those other bourgeois attributes -- it is that your work suffers in its expression.  And what you think you are saying/feeling is actually something else.  You become convoluted.  Which is not at all a negative thing, but it gets in the way when you don't trust your audience. 

I have always had contempt for people who need to be shown or entertained or "explained" to.  It probably comes from the fact that I myself had so many learning disabilties and academic problems at school...

Four months after the first cut of Protest, I went home to my apartment on 131st street between Malcolm X & 5th ave; swallowed every pill I had in my bathroom, ingested as much cocaine as I possibly could, dressed in the best suit I had, lay down and waited for God (or someone) to shut my eyes.

I woke up three days later in Harlem Hospital with my entire family hovering over me.  To this day, I still think about the fact that I was in that hell-hole asylum for one month and no one even sent me a flower...

I tried to kill myself because I was tired of living, but mainly because I knew I had failed as an artist.  I knew Protest was not the film it could have been, but then again -- I am not the artist I "could" have been -- so what does that mean?  It is in the accepting of your limitations as an artist that you grow.  It is, for better or for worse, what defines your work.  It's what you don't do "well" that becomes your identity and this is where you must wear your genuine attempts as a badge of courage.  Especially if those attempts fall short.

"Powerful...As an Act of Protest aims to teach and shock - and succeeds on both counts."

Walter Dawkins

    Variety, August 1, 2002 

I cannot watch Protest without cringing.  It is a young man's movie, a true coming-of-age-story and it is riddled with a rawness that is like an exposed nerve. And its tenderness and sincerity is what I am most proud of, along with its unfettered rage.  Just a scene or two rejuvenates my rebellious sensibilities -- the way I felt when I first saw Network, Talk Radio, Animal Crackers, , Dog Day Afternoon or Woman Under the Influence or Ludwig or Chameleon Street or Do the Right Thing, Ashes & Embers, Dr Strangelove, Casino, or Bush Mama.  These films were like hard-core punk albums.  They didn't hold back and they had something to say. And I loved how most of them employed great amounts of drama and comedy and blurred the division.

But the stately dismay of Bill Gunn, Sokurov, Bresson, Dreyer, Ozu, and Sembene taught me a lot about stasis and inducing a state of grace. And I must tip my hat to Robert Kramer, the American Left's great un-sung hero of cinema.

I lack the finesse these great artists and movies have, but the writer must write what he knows and write what he feels.  He must start there and go onward, and then you find yourself scrambling, lost, explored unmapped territory and really getting into the bush of it all.  I know about truth because I know about lies.  And I preach because I'm convinced that sooner or later -- I will actually become a better human being, too.  But mainly I do it because most artists are too effete, kind, and pander to what they have been led to believe that the masses want. 

I may have been born to rage, to raise hell.  Some of us are.  But the art of it all is knowing how to push it, when to kick it, where to throw it.

 And sometimes...when to jump off the edge.  If there is no progress without struggle, there can be no evolution without contemplation, resolution without conflict, and consciousness...without rage. 

So, this damn movie got me through my twenties and nearly killed me.  I spent I spent the first half of my thirties crawling back out of the grave I had dug for myself.  And although I'm rusty, not as polished -- what I say comes through as clearly as the debt we are incurring and I no longer dwell how I am going to express the scream in my head.  I just do it.  And I thank God (or someone, or some thing) that I can.

There are no existing tapes, copies of Protest available.  There are several butchered copies and bootlegs circulating, but none with my original edits, glitches, fingerprints, stains, or blessing.  And in a bi-polaroidic episode, I threw the masters over the terrace, into the street in Berlin while we were living on the top floor of a Five-story walk up in Wedding.  Nina warned me I would regret it.  I can only say I regret it now that people have written asking for copies and have taken a new interest in the film.  The cast, the backers, the crew -- they all hated it, no one helped me promote it.  People were jealous, people were strange, people were scared, some thought I was Spike Lee on acid. There were all sorts of reasons why the film "failed."  But I take responsibility as I am its father.

And I love Protest because it tried.  Because, like me, it did the best it could do -- with its allotment of talent, faith, and resilience.  We are all responsible for our own failure and our own success.  This desperate video taught me, gave me, showed me both sides of this coin.  And I am much deeper and richer for having undergone such a traumatic experience -- but one that was, in the very least, sincere. 

It has been nice to revisit some of these feelings.  Thanks for reading. 

Film History:

• Pan African Film Festival, Los Angeles 2002
• American Black Film Festival, South Beach Miami 2002
• Anthology Film Archives, NYC - 2002
• Brecht Forum-Visual Liberation Film festival, NYC - September 2002
• Imagenation Cinema Cafe, Harlem NYC - November 2002
• Afro-American Cultural Center, Charlotte, North Carolina  2003
• UNC, Chapel Hill Honorarium Screening - February 2003
• FESPACO Film Festival Burkina Faso, Africa February 2003
• The Oberia Dempsey Center Harlem  2003
• Cine Noir Black Film Festival, Wilmington NC April 2003
• Denver Pan African Film Festival, Denver, CO - April 2003Parish Art Gallery
• sponsored by Awareness magazine-James Lisbon July 2003
• Florida State University-Tallahassee Honorarium Screening 2004
• Brecht Forum Downtown - Lower Manhattan NYC - August 2005
• Black International Cinema Festival, St.Louis, MO 2005
•                                                Paris, France & Berlin, Germnay

For inquiries or special requests to the flm, contact the author at:

 info@nomadjunkie.com