Maya Annik Bedward’s fascinating new documentary goes beyond reductive imagery to place the zombie and vodou in their true historical context
American film has a canon of racist disinformation that famously includes The Birth of a Nation, King Kong (1933) and Gone With the Wind.
A new documentary makes a compelling argument that zombies, as presented, commodified and popularized by Hollywood, are part of the same tradition. Black Zombie serves as work of restoration and correction, placing its faith in the quiet, persistent power of the truth as it stares down a tsunami of colonial erasure, denial, white-washing, violence and theft.
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