WHY AM I A THREAT? - 1993 (4 mins)
Director + Producer: Jahmani Perry
Why Am I A Threat? was created a year after the Rodney King verdict and 1992 LA Uprising on location in South Central, LA. Perry direct, produced, and collaborated with Ice Cube, who wrote the poem and appears in the film. In the film, Ice Cube rebukes White America for considering him and other black men a threat in America.
The short film was executive produced by Jessie Dylan and Angus Wall, Academy-Award winning editor of 'Social Network' and 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Lollapalooza Music Festival commissioned Perry and four other filmmakers to create five short films featuring five different headline music artists featured in Lollapalooza and using poetry, music, and film as the medium of collaboration between each director and music artist. All five films were shown as a special event during Lollapalooza's twenty-city concert tour in 1993 across the country. This film has screened at many film festivals, National Public Television, and 2019 was selected by the film curators at BAM Film (Brooklyn Academy of Music) to be included in their film series Black 90s: A Turning Point in American Cinema, May 3rd thru May 22nd, 2019. Why Am I A Threat? screened alongside John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood.
https://www.bam.org/film/2019/black-90s-a-turning-point-in-american-cinema
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REVIEWS
“Thanks so much for sharing this film, which could have been made yesterday. I'm glad this film is getting renewed recognition, given how much it speaks to the times in which it was made yet transcend that time as well."
Josh Siegel, film curator, The Museum of Modern Art, December, 2020
"It is through this prism of history and art that Jahmani Perry escorts his viewer through a beautiful inner-city mosaic, laden with rustic industrialized backdrops. All revolving around an illumined Ice-Cube whose proverbial inquiry "Why am I a Threat?" timelessly resonates.''
-Hatshepsut Shaw, writer