Director: Tayo Giwa
Writers: Tayo Giwa & Cynthia Gordy Giwa
Running time: 58mins
12th century CE Byzantine cosmology had it that ‘devils’ were definitively from the West – born in the setting sun. When a group of African American activists in Brooklyn in the 1960s were choosing a name for the cultural nationalist organisation they had brought into being, they thought along similar lines to the Byzantines. They called their project – East. The founders’ reasoning was East would stand in opposition to the devils, the hegemony of the West – the name would symbolise their attempt to throw off the yoke of white supremacy.
Tayo Giwa’s feature length documentary history of the organisation’s rise, demise, and legacy has the celebratory title The Sun Rises in the East. Giwa hits us straight away with a caption sequence and voice over laying out the goal of the organisation – to build a cultural community of individuals who wanted institutions and businesses founded and run by black people. And with an activist’s joie de vivre, we are given the clarion call – A Home. A Revolution. It’s Nation Time.
The first part of the movie looks at the genesis of East and situates it in the 60s Civil Rights movement and its effects on the New York education system. To drive the narrative, the director uses talking head sequences cut with some extraordinary archive stills and TV news footage. They appear throughout the film but three of the talking heads make a particularly telling contribution to our understanding of how East came into being and what it hoped to achieve. We meet Kwasi Konadu, an academic from City University New York who has written extensively about the wider African American experience but has also written a specific history of East. Suzanne Spellen, a local historian with deep understanding of the workings of the Brooklyn community and the cityscape. And Mark Winston Griffith, a community activist. Together, the three produce a historical exposition which is measured, judicious, and, above all, elegant – one of the best I have seen in Indy or, indeed, any other cinema.
Tayo Giwa’s and Cynthia Gordy Giwa’s script efficiently outlines the story of founding of the core of the East project – its school – in response to the inadequacies of the Brooklyn education system and the failure of the authorities’ bussing initiative to end segregation in the wider New York area. Somewhat miraculously, East had gained some control of the management of local education and had proposed firing teachers who were not committed to Black Liberation. The proposal brought down the wrath of the national teachers’ union and led to a protracted strike which shut down all New York schools. Backed by the central government, the union won – and the local community lost.
Tayo Giwa highlights two aspects of the strike which will not surprise anyone who has been or is currently involved in Liberations or community activism. The role of organised labour as a vested interest group acting as a reactionary force against the needs of the local community. The deployment of the canard of antisemitism as a smear tactic against a grassroots movement. Some things truly do not change.
In the film’s evocation of the events of the bussing and the strike, the use of the archive stills footage is superb – we see so many haunting images. The one that stayed with me was from the bussing episode. A small African American child with an oversized school bag on their back is walking past a group of white parents held back by a white cop – the parents are looking at the kid as though they were some alien visitor from outer space.
After the strike, East founded its own school. The film then details how the organisation went on to expand into publishing and book, record, food, and clothing stores. East promoted local gigs featuring many of the greats of African American jazz. Martha Bright, one of the activists, sums up the meaning of the expansion, telling us – nation building has to be based on institutions. One of the key institutions formed was the International African Arts Festival which achieved global renown. In a startingly ambitious move, East took up the offer of land from the Guyana government to grow its own food and activists journeyed to South America to establish a farming cooperative.
The filmmakers adeptly sketch the role of a charismatic figure in the movement – the sun at the centre of East’s solar system – a teacher named Jitu Weusi. Weusi died in 2013 but in well-chosen archive footage – past interviews and clips of Weusi MCing a festival – – we get the impression that we are in the presence of a mesmerising human being.
East’s heyday was the 1970s. Tayo Giwa uses the same format of talking heads and image collage to tell the story of the movement’s collapse – a tale that will be familiar to anyone involved in community activism. The burn out and departure of the founders. Infiltration by undercover cops. Obstruction by the local agents of the state. Gentrification and its negative effects on the local community.
What is a delight and what is one of the great strengths of The Sun Rises in the East is the movie’s final section that looks at East’s legacy – the community spirit and institutions that endured. Tayo Giwa introduces us to Kweli Campbell, Jitu Weusi’s daughter, Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele, son of one of the founders, and Fela Barclift, one of the original activists. In short well put together monologues, we learn a hell of lot about East’s impact on their individual lives and on their fellow African Americans in Brooklyn. Of the enduring institutions, the director shows us footage of the latest International African Arts Festival -part local street carnival and part global music celebration and Barclift tells us that the African American school, Little Sun People, she founded in 1981 is still going strong. Hope and endurance.
The account of the fall and the legacy is no hagiography. Taking the rigorous approach to historical analysis that they employ throughout the movie; the filmmakers detail the misogyny and gender discrimination that was alive and very much kicking and which permeated the founding and the everyday life of the movement through to the 1970s.
The Sun Rises in the East looks wonderful – thanks to fine cinematography from Christina Wairegi and editing from Herman Jean-Noel. Brooklyn musicians provide the soundtrack which is employed sparingly but to great effect.
One of the features that I particularly enjoyed was the staging of the talking heads scenes. Some were nondescript quasi-Zoom settings, but others were shot in large rooms with subtle lighting conjuring a theatre-like atmosphere that seemed to amplify the impact of the speaker’s words. The director used an unusual device specifically for the scenes featuring Kweli Campbell – quite a lot of the footage was shot in profile. Again, we had an amplification effect – Campbell’s words came across as lapidary statements – as though they were incised on some coinage of the revolution.
Joy. I love it when filmmakers include maps in a documentary, so we know where the fuck we are on this planet of ours. For The Sun Rises in the East, the director included TWO maps. The areas of East’s local community were coloured the red, green, and black of Africa which surely must have struck panic in the hearts of City Hall. Tayo Giwa also bought in several pieces of stock drone footage. Together with the maps, the drone shots aided this viewer in trying to understand the Brooklyn topography and its relationship to the wider New York cityscape – so helpful.
It seems a bit of a quibble given that the filmmakers set themselves just under an hour of running time but there were odd things I would have enjoyed seeing included. It would have been great to have had some footage from the early East gigs –glimpses of a Roland Kirk or a Sun Ra performance would have been a blast. But maybe it is not recoverable? It would also have been useful and not left questions unanswered in the viewer’s mind if there had been a short account of what happened to the Guyanese food cooperative. In the round, I would have valued a more detailed analysis of the relationship between the rise and fall of East and the wider national and global political economy. For instance, the film mentions without comment that the original East school was funded by the Ford Foundation – that must have been the weirdest shit since Edsel Ford paid for Diego Rivera to paint the Detroit murals. But time is short – maybe that would be for another movie?
Tayo Giwa and their team have given us a landmark documentary that will no doubt go on to win many awards both in the US and internationally. The film is a fitting tribute to the people who built East and, like the legacy it so eloquently portrays, it will certainly endure. For any Liberations activists this film will be essential viewing. In accordance with the founding ethos of the movement, The Sun Rises in the East is available to watch for free in the link at the top of this article. Do try and catch the movie and pass it on.
After watching the movie and writing this review, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of hope. As a lyric poet from across the river to Brooklyn put it:
For what are we without hope in our hearts.
Thank you to East, and to the filmmakers.