BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL: THE KWAME BRATHWAITE STORY

Everyone knows the phrase “Black Is Beautiful,” but how many know of the man who helped popularize it? We are speaking of the iconic African American photographer Kwame Brathwaite, the man who, despite chronicling the black community from the turbulent postwar years of pogroms, racial segregation, and the civil rights movement to this day, granting it visibility and the chance to embrace its identity, features, African heritage, and culture, yet his name as both photographer-activist, and as the reference point for the aforementioned phrase, remained elusive, with no mention of it anywhere from Google to the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. This documentary aims to rectify a serious oversight and to tell the story of Brathwaite and the Black Is Beautiful movement that was inextricably linked to him.