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ABSTRACT
Ashes and Embers written, produced, and directed by Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima garnered numerous awards and accolades from critics when it first came out in 1982, yet it has rarely been the subject of a critical review. A pioneer of the L.A. Rebellion and proponent of Third Cinema political philosophy, Gerima embodies generations of aesthetic theories and influences from W.E.B. DuBois, Oscar Micheaux, Frantz Fanon, to Fernando Solanas and Ousmane Sembene;and he has forged from this precursory package a unique, experimental cinematic style and the only revolutionary film tradition in the United States. With thousands of returning Vietnam War veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, Gerima found an exemplary character for psychoanalysis in Black Vietnam veteran Ned Charles. Ashes and Embers explores Ned's psychological dislocation and trauma as he wanders from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to the countryside trying to come to grips with his tormented past. This pivotal film with its emphasis on personal and historic memory, semiotic exposition, and nonconventional technique set a theoretical precedent for Gerima's subsequent films Sankofa and Teza. Ashes and Embers is possibly his most complex film and one of the best films on the psychological trauma of a Vietnam War veteran ever produced.
Released in 1982 after having produced and directed a half dozen movies, Ashes and Embers, according to Haile Gerima, marked a turning point in his filmmaking career. "Sankofa and Teza would not have been possible without the creative shift in filmmaking I had made in Ashes and Embers, yet this film has received few critical reviews" (Gerima). Stylistic innovation in structure and content were from the beginning part of a filmmaking revolution led by the L.A. Rebellion, a group of mostly African American and African film students at UCLA, who rejecting Western standards of filmmaking, devised their own unique filmic style concomitant with the social and political movements of the late 1960s and became the cinematic voice of the Black Arts Movement. Taking an activist role with the camera as their weapon, L.A. Rebellion adopted the African aesthetic promoting the social function of art and created an art that addressed the specific needs of their communities. Commercial film production was avoided in favour of independent productions, a practice that has paid off...