Black Punk Weekend Puts Black Punks in the Spotlight

The James Spooner-curated Black Punk Weekend at Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) and Black & Tan Hall highlights the diverse history and contribution of Black punks across the globe.

by Jas Keimig

Next weekend, from Friday, March 29, to Sunday, March 31, Black punks are taking over the Black & Tan Hall and Northwest Film Forum (NWFF) for Black Punk Weekend. In a three-day-long event dreamed up by the Sankofa Film Society; NWFF; and comic artist, filmmaker, and tattooer James Spooner, the rich tradition and diversity of Black punk communities will be on full display, with film screenings, shows, and a delicious brunch.

"There are a lot of specialized events for Black people all across the country, but not necessarily in Seattle," said Jill Busby, artistic director of NWFF. "So something that is not just a celebration of Black history, but also the Black present and future and is subcultural, I think, gets us out of a rut of talking about the same things and celebrating the same things because they feel safe in a community that likes it to be safe and Black."

Although Black & Tan Hall, Sankofa, and NWFF coordinated the effort, the majority of the weekend's programming has been curated by Spooner. A lauded graphic novelist of coming-of-age memoir The High Desert, Spooner grew up as a frustrated biracial kid in the small desert town of Apple Valley, California, and found refuge in bands like the Sex Pistols and Black Flag.

In 2003, he directed and released the seminal documentary Afro-Punk, a 66-minute film that provides a radical, firsthand glimpse into the lives of Black punks across the country in the early 2000s. Spooner's experiences in the punk scene compelled him to make the documentary, spurred by Black folks asking him why he's trying to be white and white punks evoking the white liberal sentiment of "race doesn't matter."

"I think, personally, I needed to validate my experience through talking to other people," said Spooner in a recent interview. "That's partially why I didn't just get interviews with six or seven prominent Black punk voices, but instead I cast a net wide and anyone and everyone who identified as Black and punk or hardcore to tell their story, which, in turn, validated my own."

Afro-Punk follows the lives of four Black punks and intersperses interviews with over 80 more throughout, discussing their personal histories, styles, prejudices they experience, and what compels them to participate in the underground scene. "Being Black and being a punk rocker are pretty similar," says one punk in the film. Taking the ethos of bands on the road, Spooner toured Afro-Punk to different cities, screening it over 300 times. The documentary also served as the inspiration for the Afropunk Festival, which Spooner co-founded with Matthew Morgan in 2005 (though he parted ways with the fest in 2008 over philosophical differences).

For Black Punk Weekend, Spooner wants to harken back to the original spirit of the Afropunk Festival, which was "a film festival with bands," Spooner explains. In addition to Afro-Punk, other documentary film screenings over the three-day event include: William E. Badgley's documentary on U.K. punk legend Don Letts, Rebel Dread; a film about the Minnesota anti-racist skinhead crew, The Baldies; a look at D.C. punk icons in Bad Brains: A Band in DC; White Riot, which follows the story of the U.K.'s Rock Against Racism movement in the late '70s; Henry Selick's delightfully punk stop-motion feature Wendell & Wild; and a feature about the U.K. punk rebel Poly Styrene: Poly Styrene: I Am a Clich.