Mariama Diallo’s fiendishly subversive short HAIR WOLF blends horror and Blaxploitation tropes to satirize racism, gentrification, and cultural appropriation via the story of employees at a Black hair salon confronting a strange new monster: white women intent on literally sucking the lifeblood from Black culture. It’s paired with another cutting racial satire, Robert Downey Sr.’s gonzo 1969 indie PUTNEY SWOPE, an audacious critique of capitalism and white privilege in which the lone Black man on the board of a Madison Avenue advertising agency is inadvertently elected chairman—and proceeds to launch a Black Power corporate revolution.
Directed by Mariama Diallo • 2018 • United States
Starring Kara Young, Taliah Webster, Madeline Weinstein
She’s white and she wants dreads . . . The staff of a Black hair salon in Brooklyn fend off a terrifying new monster: white women intent on literally sucking the lifeblood from Black culture.
Directed by Robert Downey Sr. • 1969 • United States
Starring Arnold Johnson, Laura Greene, Buddy Butler
The most popular film by Robert Downey Sr. is this offbeat classic about the antics that ensue after Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, his voice dubbed by a gravelly Downey), the token black man ...