By Justin Smith, Sr. Correspondent

In a new kind of living portraiture, a remarkable group of African-American notables share candid stories and revealing insights into the struggles, triumphs and joys of black life in the U.S. when THE BLACK LIST: VOLUME ONE debuts MONDAY, AUG. 25 (9p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO.

The film is a collaboration between celebrated portrait photographer and filmmaker Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who directs, and award-winning journalist Elvis Mitchell who interviews the following complete list of people.

 

 

· Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball legend · Sean Combs, musician · Mahlon Duckett, Negro Leagues star · Thelma Golden, museum curator · Lou Gossett, Jr., actor · Bill T. Jones, choreographer · Vernon Jordan, attorney · Marc Morial, former New Orleans mayor · Toni Morrison, author · Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright · Richard Parsons, executive

· Colin Powell, former Secretary of State · Susan Rice, political strategist · Chris Rock, comedian · Al Sharpton, activist · Lorna Simpson, artist · Slash, musician · Dawn Staley, basketball star · Faye Wattleton, Planned Parenthood · Keenen Ivory Wayans, actor · Serena Williams, tennis star · Zane, author

The traditional definition of the phrase blacklist has been rendered obsolete by the documentary The Black List, which seeks to bury the negative weight of the term by allowing African-Americans to provide an up-to-the-minute answer to the grim origins of blacklist. In a film that works as series of living portraits, twenty prominent African Americans of various professions, disciplines and backgrounds offer their own stories and insights on the struggles, triumphs and joys of black life in this country and manage to re-define blacklist for a new century in the process. The film is presented as a series of vignettes a kind of living portraiture in which the subjects address the camera directly as they tell their stories.

The film was directed by the renowned portrait photographer and filmmaker, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, from a series of interviews conducted by Elvis Mitchell. Mitchell is never seen on camera or heard, thus allowing the subjects own voices to remain the focus. The actual title of the film itself, The Black List, was conceived of by Mitchell as an answer to the constant taint applied to the word black in Western culture.

Those interviewed for the film come from a vast and different collection of disciplines that draw from the worlds of the arts, sports, politics; the group assembled features luminaries such as Toni Morrison, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Vernon Jordan, Chris Rock, Richard D. Parsons, Zane and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Their tales of their lives begin with the personal, and move into an area of larger social repercussion, as the weight of their accomplishment on this country and world come into focus.

The Black List is more than an enumeration of obstacles overcome its a singular view of America from a type of insight and perspective rarely seen on screen in a way that emphasizes the elegance and determination of the subjects.

The HBO documentary film is the hub of "The Black List Project" which celebrates the diverse experiences of being black in America and maximizes the power of these stories through a range of activities, including: a traveling museum exhibition of photographic portraits, organized by The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; an upcoming book of photographs and interviews, published by Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York; and a national interactive, curriculum-based educational program. "The Black List Project" is produced by Freemind Ventures, a New York-based media collective, and is the pilot program to the larger Freemind initiative "One Million Stories."
"The Black List: Volume One" premieres Monday, August 25 at 9PM/8C on HBO.

News Sources: HBO IMDB