“In the absence of light, everything is Black.”

These words are said from the enigmatic voice of Caitlyn Strycker, overlayed on the black and white film of Black people comprised of all skin tones and shades, posed with stoic guises and dressed in costumes straight out of the roaring twenties. 

El Color Negro has power behind it—Black power. It certainly isn’t afraid to show, or tell, its audience just that. Directed by Andy Hodgson, El Color Negro is inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and George Floyd’s passing, which occurred almost a year ago. The 4-minute spoken word short is a reclamation of the meaning of Black, a word which is often defined and redefined by everybody else other than Black people. 

Hodgson said that writing and directing El Color Negro was emotionally difficult because it brought up past trauma of growing up in South America during the 1980s civil war. Still, Hodgson wanted to challenge himself by putting “out a piece of art that would make people think” about the meaning of Blackness. Not the skin tone, but the colour and where we as a society “sort of shamed the word Black.”

Some words first originate in language with positive connotations, but sometimes over decades, the dominant culture will change the meaning. Maybe towards a more negative connotation, or possibly, society chooses to erase these words from its diction altogether. 

Black is one of those elusive words.

As Strycker says in El Color Negro: “in ancient Egypt, the color Black represents life and rebirth.” This is in comparison to the black soil of the Nile, which was Black and fertile. The meaning of the colour Black in ancient Egypt signifies prosperity and new beginnings. Nowadays, there is typically a negative interpretation of the word, as if the mention of it evokes fear within others. 

Hodgson says that further along in his film’s development, he modelled the concept of El Color Negro after revolutionaries like Malcolm X, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Sandino. As a Westerner, all the destructive narratives fed to me by the media about these prominent figures came to mind immediately. However, isn’t this thinking similar to how society has defined Blackness before those who were Black even had the chance to define the word themselves?

The film mimics the nature of these revolutionaries, revealing the constant pursuit to change the world.  The cast, which includes Miss Universe Canada Nova Stevens, Adrian Holmes, Rukiya Bernard and the narrator herself, Caitlin Stryker, who pose in 1920s backdrop and costume, are rewriting history. The history of the word Black. 

That’s what makes El Color Negro so immensely empowering. In a world that labels us before we as people even decide how we want to be identified, El Color Negro transforms a harmful characterization many Black people have been ascribed to by society—reclaiming Black as a source of power, strength, and nobility. 

El Color Negro was screened globally as part of the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival from Mar. 4-14 and is part of a 3 part series of short films.