Malcolm X on 70mm

“Read behind the words.” Begun with an early screenplay by James Baldwin and Arnold Perl, then passed through years of stalled drafts and would-be directors, Malcolm X became, in Spike Lee’s hands, a globe-trotting studio epic pitched between civil-rights biopic and post–Rodney King indictment of the U.S.. Denzel Washington gives commanding form to Malcolm’s great original personality, as Lee structures the biography as a chain of rebirths born out of hubris, moving through distinct eras of Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, Malcolm X, and finally el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. Without euphemism, the film plainly articulates state-sanctioned (especially Merriam-Webster-sanctioned) history itself as a conspiracy; whiteness as an organized, hidden-in-plain-sight power with pedagogical, carceral, sexual, and economic tendrils; and how Black political consciousness emerges in direct opposition to a constantly threatened, terrorized, and surveilled state of being. By deploying prestige biopic conventions and big-budget ambitions—the production became the first American commercial film allowed to shoot on-location in Mecca—despite industrial pressure to make the film smaller and cheaper, Lee smuggled a radical analysis of an American life that remains vital, moving, provocative, and unsparing as ever.

Filmed in Super 35 by Ernest Dickerson and enlarged to 70mm for select first-run engagements in 1992.

Please note: FLC is screening from one of the original release prints, which uses a vintage magnetic soundtrack. Audio tracks are stored on magnetic stripes attached to the film print itself and are more prone to degrade than optical soundtracks. It will sound louder and richer compared to most 35mm prints and many digital sound systems, but because it’s an older analog format you’ll also hear the wear-and-tear of its many years going through projectors. This is part of the experience, so let every hiss, softness, pop, intermittent silence and visual imperfection remind you of the many audience members who saw this same print before you.