This engaging, cross-cutting film documents the final two weeks of the notable writer Amiri Baraka’s life before serving his sentence for “resisting arrest” in Newark, NJ, while sitting in his parked car arguing (without physically fighting) with his wife. St. Claire Bourne’s project was produced in 1982 at WXXI-TV in Rochester, NY, with help from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts, the American Film Institute, and the Nation Foundation. It’s a time capsule of a creative man in his time and place, but rich with issues still facing Black Americans four decades later.
We see a home on a pleasant street with a 1970s car in the driveway, then a kid on drums practicing a Max Roach score. We quickly see the stern face of the lad’s father, Baraka. Then we cut to a black-and-white scene from his play, “The Dutchman,” of...