Welcome back to the fourth installment of Who Put That On? Honestly guys, I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve never done anything four times repeatedly in my life. My laptop is still broken, but that’s okay; that’s what internet cafes are for. Ahhh, the internet cafe—the last remaining public sanctuary where one can enjoy pornography at full volume. Porn theatre culture is dead—long live the new flesh. Damn, off to a gross start already.

It’s February (or was, when I wrote this), so I wanted to talk about some incredible Black films. For full transparency, my skin is fully transparent. I look like one of those ballistic gel torsos from Spike TV’s Deadliest Warrior with Michael Cera’s bowl cut. I want to thank the poet Shane Book for putting me on to half of the films on this list. If you ever have the pleasure of taking one of Book’s film classes, he’s a fantastic professor, and I highly recommend the experience. Book is also a filmmaker; Shane, if you ever read this, please link me to Dust (2013). I want to watch it!

On that note, treat this list like a scavenger hunt—if you can track down a place to watch all four of these films, you deserve free coffee at the internet cafe. This is a very Kanopy-forward list. Please enjoy!

Babylon (1980) dir. Franco Rosso

Not the 2022 film. Not the 2022 film. I repeat, not the 2022 film.

Babylon (1980) is a masterpiece. If you love cinema—if you love the movie La Haine—do yourself a favour and watch this tonight. Babylon depicts life as a Caribbean immigrant living under the white oppressive structures of Thatcher-era South London. The protagonist, Blue (Brinsley Forde), is a DJ for a local sound system who, over the span of 48 hours, finds his life punctuated by constant confrontation. While Babylon revels in the intoxicating party of the underground reggaeton soundsystem subculture, the film also seeks to define the term “Babylon” in its Rastafari context. This definition speaks to the capitalistic, colonial, and militant structures that perpetuate xenophobia and limit opportunity for cultures that are non-conforming to white hegemony.

What I find fascinating about Babylon is that even after aptly displaying systemic persecution and the depths of racism towards immigrants, the film was censored in the UK and even banned (for nearly 40 years) in the US. The reason for its restricted release was that it was “too controversial, and likely to incite racial tension.” Just as an exercise in juxtaposition, Sálo: 120 Days of Sodom has never been banned in the US and received a theatrical release. Hmmmmm. While Babylon is certainly gritty and honest, you’ll notice there isn’t anything beyond language and weed smoke that would inspire this film’s censorship. The suppression of this film is a direct display of the structures of Babylon at work—it only seeks to confirm and exaggerate the picture’s commentary.

Babylon’s soundtracking is near flawless. Dennis Bovell’s score acts as the film’s gravity. Music grounds the audience and offers reprieve between scenes of gruelling violence. It holds the movie together with the same glue that unites Blue, Ronnie (Karl Howman), Beefy (Trevor Laird), and Spark (Brian Bovell). The film itself is partly inspired by Bovell’s wrongful imprisonment, which he incurred running a sound system in the UK.

I recommend watching Babylon literally anywhere. This movie bangs.

And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead (2015) dir. Billy Woodberry

This is one of those documentaries that is shown to you on a thick-backed graphite-coloured television that a teacher wheels in on a matching metal stand. The type that’s largely just a slideshow of different historical film photos, with a jazz song swinging in the back. The only real video results from testimonies delivered by old balding farts sitting cross-legged on foreign sofas. What a pitch, am I right?

Admittedly, this recommendation is largely just an excuse for me to get nerdy about one of my favourite historic subcultures—the Beats—and one of my favourite historic poets—Bob Kaufman. Cue “Brooklyn Baby” by Lana Del Rey. I can picture your scrunched brow, eyes recoiling at the insurmountable levels of pretentiousness emanating from your screen, but hold on, you have to hear about Bob Kaufman. Cue “Vomit Express” by Allen Ginsberg. Kaufman was a San Fran poet from the 50s whose whirling, syncopated oral performances quickly established him as a poet’s poet. Kaufman’s life deserves to be preserved in a well-bound thousand-page book, but unfortunately for us, he wasn’t big on writing things down. And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead tries to honour the transient electricity that Kaufman lived his life with—delivering biographical details with a patchwork sensibility and allowing the jazzy backing to overpower segments of dictation or photography.

You could go on about this poet for hours, but here are some of the Cliff Notes. After becoming a maritime merchant at 13, he was fired, blacklisted, and surveilled by the FBI for ye ol’ communist sympathies. In other words, he was interested in a maritime union. Kaufman was arrested in New York for, quote, “Walking on the grass in Washington Square Park.” I’m sure in a redacted section of the report, in parentheses, it read [as a Black man]. This landed Kaufman in Riker’s and later a psych ward for “behavioural problems.” As we all know, the best way to deal with behavioural problems, especially ones that are diagnosed by the state, is electroshock therapy. Kaufman was eventually released from the meat grinder of racially oppressive injustice but had become a very changed man. I know this is running long, but I got to get this in: after JFK was assassinated, Kaufman committed to what I describe as a pescatarian ten-year vow of silence. That’s where you don’t really talk to anybody, but you can still ask strangers for cigarettes. Beyond his life, Kaufman’s work stands on its own. How about this: go read A Terror is More Certain. If you like it, read the next paragraph. If you don’t, move on to movie number three.

And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead is far from a groundbreaking documentary. It is narrow in its visual execution, and its attempts at biography have a patchwork feel. However, I do believe that this film pays honest tribute to the mood, energy, and history that Kaufman and his peers established. If you are at all a fan of the Beat literary movement, the doc is worth a watch. Bob Kaufman is a genius. I’d like to leave you with one of my favourite Kaufman poems, a piece that is dictated by him at the end of the film.

Would You Wear My Eyes?
My body is a torn mattress,
Disheveled throbbing place
For the comings and goings
Of loveless transients.
The whole of me
Is an unfurnished room
Filled with dank breath
Escaping in gasps to nowhere.
Before completely objective mirrors
I have shot myself with my eyes,
But death refused my advances.
I have walked on my walls each night
Through strange landscapes in my head.
I have brushed my teeth with orange peel,
Iced with cold blood from the dripping faucets.
My face is covered with maps of dead nations;
My hair is littered with drying ragweed.
Bitter raisins drip haphazardly from my nostrils
While schools of glowing minnows swim from my mouth.
The nipples of my breasts are sun-browned cockleburrs;
Long-forgotten Indian tribes fight battles on my chest
Unaware of the sunken ships rotting in my stomach.
My legs are charred remains of burned cypress trees;
My feet are covered with moss from bayous, flowing
across my floor.
I can’t go out anymore.
I shall sit on my ceiling.
Would you wear my eyes?

I recommend watching And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead in whatever the San Franciscan equivalent to the Cafe Reggio is. No headphones, full volume. Internet cafe style.

The Flavor of Cassava Leaf Over Rice (2025) dir. Tracey Todd

After a weekend of busy boozing, I lit some candles, got a little high, and fell into the bath. My apartment’s lavatory fan has been broken since I moved in (thanks Sandra), so it wasn’t long before a veil of steam and smoke blanketed my face and shoulders as my body rested beneath a glassy pool of chamomile soak. This is how I recommend watching The Flavor of Cassava Leaf Over Rice. It’s a forty-minute freehand animated film that explores a sentimental and poetic affair shared between two ex-partners. The film is an exquisite exercise in mood—oozing a rich, warm melancholy that cozies up naked between the viewer’s ears. The cassava leaf, when not prepared with specific care, releases cyanide, and the ex-lover’s weekend is filtered through this subtext. Tracey Todd isn’t afraid of silence or ambience, twisting pauses to her advantage.

While blatantly artsy (it’s on Mubi guys), the whole film still reads quite effortlessly; a fact that can easily be attributed to real smooth dialogue and a patient pace. There is also something incredibly soothing about the lofi audio mixing. You can almost visualize the microphones when lines are being delivered, and you can hear the lip between dead air before a line is delivered and true silence. I found this imperfection kind of charming. It was consistent with the art style and gave the piece texture; plus a little dose of ASMR. Also, watch out for Death (Bengt Ekerot) from The Seventh Seal, who traipses around the saxophone-soaked Californian landscape hanging dong. Todd even leans into the bit with a facetiously titled diner. I haven’t written anything very funny or outlandish, so here’s a take: The Seventh Seal is boring and stupid. I get that it created the first metaphor in cinema or whatever, but Bergman’s got better movies, c’mon!

I’ve already told you how I recommend watching The Flavor of Cassava Leaf Over Rice. We’re talking bubbles, we’re talking incense, we’re talking crippling hangxiety. Pop this animated treat on and call it a soother. Unless you’re adulterous scum; then it might only exaggerate the anxiety. Also shout out to Tracey Todd for liking my Letterboxd review.

Faya Dayi (2021) dir. Jessica Beshir

Oh no, not a black and white dreamy documentary that captures its subject with poetic elegance. I thought this was fun: my friend Kat showed me this documentary, and it’s a film about chewing the euphoria-inducing plant, khat. Isn’t that neat? Don’t worry, I am aware that that bombed. I’ve just been holding on to that coincidence for four years, and it’s been chewing me up inside. Enh? Enh? Fuck, I’m falling apart.

Visually, Faya Dayi is one of the most striking films I’ve ever seen. A cinematographer’s black and wet dream. Reminiscent of ballet, Jessica Beshir’s camera glides with a seamless and controlled grace. The depth of picture that Beshir achieves is breathtaking—I’m not even quite sure how to articulate the clarity and composition. You can pause the film at any random moment, and that frame fully deserves publication in a photo book. There is no bad shot. There is no mediocre shot. This sensual and hypnotic visual exploration of Ethiopia provides the backbone on which the informative flesh collects.

I am not going to lie, I had no idea about the khat industry until watching this doc. For those in my same boat, khat is a mild but highly addictive stimulant that people chew socially. It has its roots embedded in traditional Ethiopian spirituality, recognized as a “gift from God.” Simultaneously, khat paralyzes its users, as well as the nation’s agricultural growth. This creates fascinating dissonance between a nation’s culture and prosperity. Beshir’s exploration of this dissonance, and of Ethiopia’s economy as a whole, is quite ambivalent. Faya Dayi’s commentary is often spacey and abstract, quickly switching between fact and memory. Of course, this is supposed to mirror the khat user’s experience. What I find fascinating is that this choice creates both delightful moments of mesmerism and also drains the film of practical structure. As a sacrificial exercise in symbolizing the film’s own commentary, the format is magnificent. With that said, you better come with a patient and willing disposition, as two hours of dreaming can read a bit long.

I recommend watching Faya Dayi with your good friend Kat and getting a little stoned while she takes notes for a school project.

To be completely transparent (like my skin), I don’t know how to end this one. I went and visited New York for the first time. I got caught up in that historic blizzard, and now I can’t taste or smell anything. I’m also running a fever so high I could cook an egg on my temple. That’s probably why there are so many damn esoteric atmospheric pineal-pinching films on this list. What about this: how about we close this one off with some honourable mentions—a grab bag of stuff that I considered when writing this column entry?

American Fiction (2023) dir. Cord Jefferson
Sorry To Bother You (2018) dir. Boots Riley
The Equalizer Trilogy (2013 – 2023) dir. Antoine Fuqua
Chocolat (1988) dir. Claire Denis
Beat Street (1984) dir. Stan Lathan
The Last Black Man In San Francisco (2019) dir. Joe Talbot