The film tells the story of a young black school teacher, Bato (Elvis Nolasco), who’s in desperate search for money in a futuristic world where global warming has turned melanin into a hot commodity.
It’s another sweltering 120-degree winter day with five more days to Christmas and hot is the only season left in New York City. Global warming has become a tangible threat and everyone is creating new ways to protect themselves from the sun.
Gina (Zabryna Guevera), the young schoolteacher’s wife, goes into early labor, requiring the services of a clinic for a premature delivery that neither Bato nor their friends could afford.
This sends Bato on a quest to find the money by any means necessary. Wouldn’t you? He tries robbing a ‘white’ man, who seemed to be passing away time in the neighborhood clutching onto a black woman, only to realize that he was in fact a black man! This is where the film grabs your attention.
Prior to this encounter we are introduced to Bato as a man who’s very proud of his race and thus his pigmentation. It seemed he would protect this pigmentation at all cost. Director Sayeeda Clarke introduces us quickly to a community where varied signals are used by Bato and folks to encourage, or rather enforce a Black Power mentality. Immediately, we know one thing that if these folks have anything at all left in their possession, it’s their blackness!
And will they protect it; at all cost? Or like in Bato’s case, when the financial pressure comes knocking at the door, will you give it up? Perhaps, it shouldn’t be a baffling question. But, in Sayeeda’s film, White, it is!
Bato finally decided to donate his melanin for the cash in order to have a safe delivery by his wife. And we are left with the final image of his sacrifice; his bleached hands holding his newborn black daughter.
Whether Sayeeda Clarke is using melanin as a metaphor for the more pressing issues in black people’s interactions with white privilege in America today or not, the question remains – when the pressure knocks at your door – will you give up your melanin and/or thus your race?
One thing is clear today, and also unmistakable in Sayeeda’s world, that until black people have totally emancipated themselves economically, they can never, ever, really break away from the yoke of the white man’s privilege – the burden of exploitation at every turn! Shall we ever see such an emancipation before Sayeeda’s 120-degree winter day?
For me, this is one of the most engrossing and troubling films I have seen. It begs a community to begin deliberation. It is a call to attention and I can’t possibly imagine the concept of race expressed in a more haunting and utterly believable way, aided by clever production design, including flyers, posters, and a very disturbing map in a melanin clinic while still making an important point about taking global warming even more seriously.
For Sayeeda Clarke to have achieved this in a span of 15 minutes, I can only applaud her fine direction and declare with a proclamation, my stamp of admiration that she’s indefatigably one of the brightest up and coming directors.
With these strong performances and a worthy cinematography, Director A. Sayeeda Clarke has added to the urgency on the dialogue about race and implicates black people’s sense of overpowering burden in the discussions of race and emancipation underlying America’s Systemic Racism & out-of-touch Capitalism and the rest of the world’s blind pursuit of it, in full speed.
White premiered at SXSW this year as part of the second season of ITVS’s Future States Series. Watch the full movie on FilmClique Short Films.
Genre: Sci Fi
Writer/Director: A Sayeeda Clarke
Stars: Elvis Nolasco, Zabryna Guevera, Annie Henk, Javier Molina
