How Cinema Inspired BLM and What Has Changed

Ever since the chilling day of the 25th May 2020, the death of George Floyd, the streets filled with the

words “Black Lives Matter”. This phrase has started a global movement from the scorching sun of

Sydney, Australia to the green hills of Bogotá, Colombia. Every contemporary culture can relate to the

overuse of authority and racial inequality. However these chants have been running through the speakers

of cinemas decades before the creation of the BLM movement in 2013. With groundbreaking films such

as Kassovitz’s ‘La Haine’ (1995) and Spike Lee’s ‘Do the right thing’ (1989) with the aims to educate,

reform and bring justice to victims of police brutality. 

In 1993, Mathieu Kassovitz attended a riot in Paris, similar to the protests seen this year, on the police killing of Makome M'Bowole, a 17 student shot in the head in a police station. It was here he decided to create his film ‘La Haine’ which followed three characters around an estate after a riot. The film created a movement in France, with large audiences being introduced to a different and rejected side of France. Kassovitz went on to win the Palm d'or at Cannes and inspired a cinematic movement of ‘banlieue films’, creating films such as ‘Les Miserables’ (2019) and ‘Banlieusards’ (2020) most recently. These films have all educated their audiences and spread the awareness around the use of violent authority by the police. Spike Lee’s masterpiece had a similar impact to the political climate and to cinema, with critics calling for it to be removed over fears it may provoke riots. However, 30 years later the same problems still remain, the last 20 minutes of Lee’s film present an image of Brooklyn in the 1980s that could be mirrored to the contemporary environment. In France, Adama Traoré, a Malian man killed in a police station in 2018 has reignited the movement as well as in the USA with the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake in 2020 alone. Nothing has changed since these films came out. The aim for cinema is to educate and create change, in this case it has failed. However, it is more important than ever to change this. As the film ‘La Haine’ says “Le monde est à vous”, “The world is yours”.

- Louis