1988 | United States | Experimental

Black Celebration

  • English 18 mins
  • Director | Tony Cokes
  • Writer | Tony Cokes
  • Producer | Tony Cokes

STATUS: Released

This film is currently not available.   

Subtitled A Rebellion against the Commodity, this engaged reading of the urban black riots of the 1960s references Guy Debord’s Situationist text, “The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy,” Internationale Situationniste #10 (March 1966). Along with additional commentary adapted from Barbara Kruger and musicians Morrissey and Skinny Puppy, the text posits rioting as a refusal to participate in the logic of capital and an attempt to de-fetishize the commodity through theft and gift. Cokes asks, “How do people make history under conditions pre-established to dissuade them from intervening in it?”

Riots Commodity Capitalism Resistance Spectacle
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