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Storyville

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1997

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Documentary

Summary

BBC documentary strand featuring contemporary one-off films from around the world that cover a wide range of genres and subjects and have compelling narratives and character-based stories.

Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story - Storyville

Summary

The story of Kwame Brathwaite, the Harlem photographer, activist and cultural pioneer whose work helped define the iconic Black Is Beautiful movement. Across a career spanning more than seven decades, Kwame captured over 500,000 images documenting African American life, creativity and identity, while championing Black pride through photography, fashion and grassroots activism

Review

David Butcher

The joy of documentaries about photographers is that they come studded with visual treats. There’s always a reason to pause the programme and just soak up what’s on screen – a real hazard in this profile of American photographer Kwame Brathwaite. Early on, we see a shot he took of David Bowie, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and Roberta Flack backstage at the 1975 Grammys that is so evocative of its era you could bottle it. It’s one of many here.

Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of Brathwaite until now. Members of his own family admit they were unaware of how seminal he was in the 1960s, when his images and activism helped launch the “Black Is Beautiful” movement. Brathwaite staged fashion shows and took portraits that celebrated the Afro long before it was fashionable.

A small, shy man, Brathwaite comes across as courtly in interviews, but his images helped to crystallise a key moment in US culture. As his widow puts it, “The camera was his voice.”