Is That Black Enough For You? (2022)

Is That Black Enough For You? (2022)

written, directed, and narrated by Elvis Mitchell

This documentary presents Elvis Mitchell's theories about the development and impact of Black movies, primarily the ones made from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. There are clips of interviews with a number of people including, but not limited, to Harry Belafonte, Charles Burnett. Antonio Fargas, Lawrence Fishburne, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, Glynn Turman, Mario Van Peebles, and Billy Dee Williams.

Mitchell describes the impact that dozens of Black movies and Black actors made on Hollywood and the business of making movies. The scope of the movie starts earlier than the late 1960s but it does not linger in the earlier period for very long. The scope of the movie does not extend past the late 1970s except to show images of movies that were influenced by movies from the late 1960s to late 1970s.

The movie is not broken into chapters. It flows rather seamlessly from one film and one topic to the next. This is a plus and a minus in my book. The movie is a little exhausting. There were times when I found myself drifting off to think about something mentioned in the movie. It would have been nice if the movie had paused a little more. It was also easy to get distracted by the visuals in the clips from movies and lose track of what Elvis Mitchell was saying.

I paused the movie a few times to write down titles of films that were mentioned that I have not seen and would like to see. I doubt that I will get to all the films that I wrote down in 2024. There were a few that were already on my list. Most but not all of the ones I wrote down were ones I had heard about before.