FILM SCHOOL

By Adam Thomas

Monday October 29, 2007

Black Wax (1982)
Directed by Robert Mugge

If the story of Petey Green is interesting to you then this video is a must see. Soul legend, jazz man, rap pioneer and Washington DC’s poet laureate, Gil Scott-Heron gets the full treatment in this documentary that goes back and forth between him and his band performing live and him walking through the streets of the nation’s capital with a ghetto blaster on his shoulder as he talks, raps and philosophizes about the painful irony of being a black man living in the shadow of the white house. Probably most famous for the tune The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Heron was a powerful voice who wrote and sang about racial and social injustice, poverty, drug addiction, politics and the illusion of the American Dream .