Jamaa Fanaka
1942 - 2012A Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan
Jamaa Fanaka
Jamaa Fanaka, Carmen Gordon
Jamaa Fanaka’s first project plays off the Blaxploitation’s genre conventions, an adaption of Goethe’s “Faust” presented with a non-synchronous soundtrack and superimposed over a remake of Super Fly (1972). Often out of focus with an overactive camera, the film immediately exudes nervous energy, but unlike Priest’s elegant cocaine consumption in Super Fly, Willie’s arm gushes blood as he injects heroin. A morality tale in two reels. —Jan-Christopher Horak
A Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan
Emma Mae
Jamaa Fanaka
Jerri Hayes, Ernest Williams II
A naive young woman moves from the South to stay with her aunt and uncle in Compton. As an outsider, she struggles at first to find her footing, but soon falls into the middle of a community of rebellious youth. She soon becomes more and more aware of the social injustices of the big city.
Emma Mae
Penitentiary
Jamaa Fanaka
Wilbur 'Hi-Fi' White, Leon Isaac Kennedy
A hitchhiker named Martel Gordone gets in a fight with two bikers over a prostitute, and one of the bikers is killed. Gordone is arrested and sent to prison, where he joins the prison's boxing team in an effort to secure an early parole and to establish his dominance over the prison's toughest gang.
Penitentiary