As the world marks the 100th anniversary of Malcolm X’s birth this year, a new film series at Anthology Film Archives asks: What have we forgotten about one of the most photographed and misrepresented political figures of the 20th century?
The series, “Malcolm X: Multidimensional,” which opened Thursday and runs through Sept. 21, presents a deeper and more expansive portrait of the Black leader than the more familiar images in his autobiography and its 1992 film adaptation by Spike Lee.
The series was assembled by Yasmina Price, a New York-based cultural critic and film scholar. Price said she aimed to curate a wide-ranging lineup of documentaries, experimental films, newsreels, and public television shows that, taken together, frame Malcolm X not just as a civil rights icon but as the global thinker, media strategist and committed international rights champion that he became.
“[Malcolm X]’s entire life and the long arc of both mourning and upholding his legacy has been one of misremembrance,” Price said. “The last lines of the autobiography are him saying, ‘I already know what the white press is going to do to me. They’re going to demonize me.’”
The series is one of several NYC events tied to Malcolm X’s centennial. On Friday, the Shabazz Center — located in the former Audubon Ballroom, where X was assassinated 60 years ago — will host a rare public tour and arts event featuring a video essay screening and concert by jazz titans Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith.
Earlier this year, a walking tour in East Elmhurst spotlighted the Queens home where Malcolm X and his family lived, and where they survived a firebomb attack just days before his murder.
The film series includes rarely seen works by Black documentarians like Madeline Anderson and William Greaves, experimental shorts, and footage from long-running but lesser-known programs like “Black Journal,” the Emmy award-winning WNET show about Black life that sprang out of a Black-centric documentary on the 1967 Newark riots.
The series is organized into 11 thematic programs, including one on Black television, one about popular representations of Malcolm as the polar opposite to Martin Luther King Jr., and one revisiting Malcolm X’s alignment with anticolonial movements in the Palestinian territories, Algeria and Vietnam.
Price emphasized that Malcolm X’s image has often been reduced to a narrow caricature, starting with the WNTA documentary “The Hate That Hate Produced,” which introduced him and the Nation of Islam to much of the American television-watching public.
Price especially recommends the “Fabricated Images” program, which features experimental films that explore Malcolm X’s media representation, including surveillance footage, music video-style montages, and found newsreel footage.
“[The program] really forces you to look at things another way,” Price said. “And the history of Malcolm X is something we need to relearn how to watch.”