FAIR USE Vol. I (All This Trouble) Is A Found Footage Study Of Black Images In America

Decades worth of black pop culture are condensed into a funny and moving film.

November 22, 2016

FAIR USE Vol. I (All This Trouble), a new 30-minute film by writer Mark Anthony Green, is built around a clip from an infamous interview with James Brown, late into his career by which point he'd become mired in scandal. "How did all of this trouble start?" the newscaster asks. "Living in America" Brown intones in reference to his 1985 hit. This clip serves as a kind of chapter marker for the short, which is a collage of television shows, movies, talk show appearances, newsreels, and more, cataloguing some of the images and perspectives Black America projects and endures. Amongst all this bittersweet, funny, infuriating, and inspiring footage, a profundity emerges from Brown's response to that presenter, one that's easy to overlook outside of the context Green provides here.

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Watch FAIR USE Vol. I above. Green says that the film will be screened at this year's Art Basel.

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FAIR USE Vol. I (All This Trouble) Is A Found Footage Study Of Black Images In America