A Special Screening and Public Dialogue

Followed by a Conversation with Director Jean-Claude Barny

Chicago, IL — On Thursday, February 26 at 7:00 PM, BlacknussNetwork.com, in partnership with Black United Fund, IL Inc., will host a special screening of Fanon (France/Algeria, 2025), a 113-minute dramatic feature film(not a documentary) directed by Jean-Claude Flamand-Barny, at the Logan Center for the Arts. The screening will be followed by a 30-minute public panel discussion featuring Peter Hudis, author of Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades, and Haitian scholar/activist Dr. William Bala-Gaubert, lecturer at the University of Chicago. Buy tickets here.

This is not simply a film screening.

It is a public intervention.

Why This Film — Why Now

Fanon is a powerful cinematic portrait of Frantz Fanon — psychiatrist, revolutionary thinker, and author of The Wretched of the Earth — whose work continues to shape global conversations on colonialism, racialized violence, psychological trauma, and liberation.

Rather than presenting Fanon as a historical artifact, the film positions him as a living framework for understanding power, resistance, and the afterlives of empire.

The screening comes at a moment of renewed global unrest, rising authoritarianism, and urgent debates around protest, state power, and political consciousness.

Across the world — and in the United States — policing, incarceration, surveillance, and racialized governance are no longer abstract topics. They structure everyday life.

By situating Fanon’s ideas within both historical struggle and contemporary conditions, the film invites audiences to confront how colonial logics persist in modern governance, policing, and cultural life.

Fanon did not analyze violence as spectacle.

He analyzed it as structure.

What does that mean now?

What does that mean in Chicago?

“This Film Is a Door”

A Conversation with Jean-Claude Barny

In advance of the screening, I sat down with director Jean-Claude Barny to discuss not only the making of the film — but the stakes of political cinema itself.

Cinema as Counter-Weapon

Floyd Webb: What in your life made you feel that Fanon was a film you had to direct — not just admire?

Jean-Claude Barny: I must first thank you for this opportunity. For me, it is a turning point. The cinema I practice has long been hesitant to build this kind of bridge. To see that the community which inspired my work is now connecting with it — that matters deeply.

My cinema has always been influenced by African-American film. Not simply radicalism — but commitment. Denunciation. Creative resistance.

In France in the 1980s, figures like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey were allowed to circulate in the banlieues — but our own radical figures were erased. African-American leaders were permitted because they were distant. They could be admired as myth, not lived as threat.

When I read Fanon, I understood his power. He could radically change the trajectory of a life. I waited until I was mature enough — in my craft and in myself — before bringing him to screen.

“Cinema is a weapon against another weapon.”

Radical — and Popular

Floyd: Which filmmakers influenced your pursuit of political cinema that does not soften the reality of struggle?

Barny: Pasolini in Europe. Spike Lee closer to our world. Spike Lee taught me that you can be politically engaged and deeply creative — and still reach large audiences.

What interests me is being radical in a way that reaches the maximum number of people open to transformation.

“Radical — but radical in a way that reaches the maximum number of people.”

Reading Fanon at Seventeen

Floyd: How do you translate Fanon’s ideas to screen for audiences who may never have read him?

Barny: I use everything — music, sets, costumes, actors. Cinema is not a blank page. It is construction.

I first read Fanon at 17. I could not grasp the full intellectual architecture. I read him like a patient listening to a psychiatrist. I needed to understand how I would survive in a society that would not privilege me — a society hungry for deculturation.

For us in the Caribbean, roots are everything. You cannot live without culture.

Around 21, when I knew I would become a filmmaker, I built my Black characters using Fanon’s counsel — honorable, proud, conscious. But strong characters were not enough. I wanted psychologically liberated characters. It took 20–25 years to free my own mind enough to truly listen to Fanon.

This film is not Black man speaking to Black man. It is human being speaking to human being.

“This film is a door. It opens the book — it does not read it for you.”

Neutralizing Violence

Floyd: Fanon’s writing on violence is often reduced to a slogan. How did you navigate that complexity?

Barny: Algeria was a laboratory of ultra-violence. I did not remove that. But what interested me was how Fanon neutralized violence. He did not amplify it.

He was not Malcolm X in method — he was a psychiatrist. A scientist. His intellectual force neutralized the violence of the opponent.

Not escalation.

Neutralization.

“He did not amplify violence — he neutralized it.”

The Power of Dramatic Form

Forrest Ward Cherry: This has been such a long process — you said eight years. Since this is the first dramatization of Fanon’s life, what can narrative express that a documentary simply cannot deliver?

Barny: The documentary work happens in preparation — the research, the sourcing, the travel, the immersion. That rigor is necessary. But once you enter dramatization, you enter cinema.

Narrative allows emotion to circulate differently. It allows identification. It allows breath. It allows you to feel Fanon as a living presence — not an archive.

A documentary can inform you.

Cinema can inhabit you.

That is the difference.

What Was Non-Negotiable

Forrest Ward Cherry: Fanon is such a massive historical figure. What could you absolutely not compromise on — and what did you discover about yourself in holding that line?

Barny: What was non-negotiable — even with limited budget — was that we could not diminish him. We could not give the main character less than the full aura and power he deserved.

People have known Fanon for decades. They carry their own internal version of him. If I compromised too much, the audience would simply project their assumptions onto the screen.

So I made a decision: from the opening frame, you understand that you are not at home. You are not inside your own idea of Fanon. You are inside my proposition.

“You are not at home here. You are with Fanon.”

To compromise the character would have forced the audience to fill in the gaps themselves — and that would distort everything.

Integrity was non-negotiable.

Fanon, Chicago, and the Refusal to Surrender
From where we sit in occupied Chicago—having learned how to minimize the damage of empire’s dust as it settles in 2025—we can anticipate what comes next: not sudden collapse, but a slow, grievance-driven deepening of precarity.

This is not conjecture.

It is not theory.

It is the accumulated record of more than four hundred years of human captivity, external domination, and psychological deception—rearranged, rebranded, and redeployed.

And this is where Fanon enters for me personally: as a writer, as a lover of culture and cinema, and as a worker who still believes the world can be changed.

Ending here requires more than critique. It requires constructive, disciplined imagination rooted in reality. It means rebuilding habits of critical thinking in daily life. It means culture that restores memory instead of flattening it. Cinema that shows thinking in motion. Organizing that refuses proximity politics in favor of shared material interest.

Fanon teaches that liberation does not begin when conditions are perfect. It begins when people refuse confusion as destiny.

From Chicago, that refusal still matters.

The mill grinds slow.

The Final Question

Floyd: If Fanon were sitting in the audience tonight, what would he ask us when the lights come up?

Barny: Fanon knew he was on a mission. Each of us knows we are on a mission.

The only question is:

Are you accomplishing yours?

Screening Information

FANON (2024)

Directed by Jean-Claude Barny. Presented by BlacknussNetwork.com in partnership with the Black United Fund IL Inc.

Media Partners: South Side Drive, Heartland Radio, the Hothouse, Hitting Left, and Lumpen Radio

📍 Chicago Screening

🗓 February 26

🎟 Tickets available here:

👉 https://fanonfilm.eventive.org/schedule/fanon-697aa972fb48cd7af4b523ad

Seats are limited.

If you believe in independent Black cinema infrastructure — not just content, but context — then showing up matters.

This is not passive viewing.

This is participation.

About Blacknuss Network

Blacknuss Network is an independent media and cultural platform dedicated to building sustained spaces for Black cinema, political thought, and global diasporic dialogue.

Rooted in decades of independent film work — from Blacklight Film Festival to international collaborations across Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean — Blacknuss Network continues the work of platform-building outside corporate media frameworks.

Through BlacknussNetwork.com, we curate screenings, conversations, and critical writing that situate film within broader struggles over power, memory, and representation.

Through BFMmag.com, we publish long-form interviews, essays, and archival reflections on global Black cinema and political culture.

Through Blacknuss.TV, we are building a streaming platform dedicated to independent film, radical storytelling, and curated programming that foregrounds context — not just content.

We believe cinema is not neutral.

We believe platform matters.

We believe infrastructure matters.

Independent cultural spaces survive because communities decide they are worth sustaining.

If this conversation moved you — subscribe, share, attend, and support.

The work continues.

Fanon: A Future Reading List

The film is a door. The reading is the journey.

I. Fanon’s Core Works

1. Black Skin, White Masks — Frantz Fanon

Fanon’s psychological excavation of colonial identity, language, and alienation. Essential for understanding racialization as a lived interior condition.

2. The Wretched of the Earth — Frantz Fanon

Written during the Algerian War, this is Fanon’s most cited work on decolonization, violence, national consciousness, and postcolonial responsibility.

3. A Dying Colonialism — Frantz Fanon

A study of the Algerian struggle that explores how colonial domination reshapes social life, gender roles, and political organization.

4. Toward the African Revolution — Frantz Fanon

Collected essays revealing Fanon’s evolving political analysis and commitment to continental liberation movements.

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II. Key Interpretations & Philosophical Engagements

5. Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades — Peter Hudis

A rigorous philosophical study of Fanon’s humanism, dialectics, and ethical commitments beyond reductive readings of violence.

6. Fanon: A Critical Reader — Edited by Nigel C. Gibson

A foundational collection situating Fanon within radical political theory, Black studies, and postcolonial critique.

7. Frantz Fanon — Lewis R. Gordon

A clear and accessible philosophical introduction situating Fanon within existentialism, Africana thought, and liberation theory.

8. The Postcolonial Unconscious — David Scott

Engages Fanon through the lens of tragedy and political temporality, asking what liberation means in post-revolutionary moments.

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III. Fanon in Contemporary Thought

9. Critique of Black Reason — Achille Mbembe

Expands and reinterprets Fanon for the 21st century, examining race, capitalism, and the global afterlife of colonial power.

10. On the Postcolony — Achille Mbembe

A sharp analysis of postcolonial governance, sovereignty, and spectacle that deepens Fanon’s structural insights.

11. Red, White & Black — Frank B. Wilderson III

Engages Fanon through Afropessimist theory, foregrounding structural antagonism and social death.

12. The Undercommons — Fred Moten & Stefano Harney

Not about Fanon directly, but deeply resonant with his insistence on insurgent thought outside institutional capture.

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IV. Contextual & Complementary Texts

13. Discourse on Colonialism — Aimé Césaire

Fanon’s intellectual predecessor and fellow Martinican. A searing indictment of colonial hypocrisy.

14. The Colonizer and the Colonized — Albert Memmi

A sociological companion text exploring the psychological structure of colonial domination.

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Where to Begin?

If you are new to Fanon: Start with Black Skin, White Masks.

If you want political fire: Move to The Wretched of the Earth.

If you want philosophical depth: Read Hudis and Gordon alongside Fanon.

If you want to understand how Fanon echoes into today: Engage Mbembe.

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The film is not the end. It is an invitation.

The question remains: Are you accomplishing your mission?

About the Author

My name is Floyd Webb.

I am a Chicago-based film programmer, writer, and cultural organizer working at the intersection of cinema, memory, and political thought.

My work in independent Black film spans more than four decades — from founding the Blacklight Film Festival in the 1980s to launching BFM Magazine and building international programming relationships across Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. Throughout that time, my focus has remained constant: building infrastructure for independent Black cinema outside corporate containment.

Blacknuss Network is a continuation of that work.

It is not a startup. It is a lineage.

From the days of screening films when no one else would, to collaborating with filmmakers across the diaspora, to curating conversations that situate cinema within struggles over power and representation — the mission has been steady.

I believe film is not neutral.

I believe programming is political.

I believe platform is power.

When we host a screening like Fanon, it is not simply to show a film. It is to situate it within a continuum of thought, struggle, and responsibility.

Chicago raised me. Mississippi shaped me. Africa clarified me.

The work continues.

We do not gather for nostalgia. We gather to think clearly. And to build what must outlast us.

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