Why Is We Americans?

If Morris and Aloni’s film is unfocused and weak in its patterning and construction, it is equally an important record of a living history that refuses to mythologize itself.

It's a story that spans past and present, arts and politics, and kin and country - and the movie, with its haphazard editing, struggles to contain it all.

An essential historical survey.

This documentary examines several decades of multigenerational African American art-making and activism in the family whose late patriarch was Amiri Baraka aka LeRoi Jones.

Why Is We Americans? packs a lot into 102 minutes, feeling both overstuffed and rushed given its taste of the Baraka familys rich and wide-ranging history. Yet it also brims with black pride and passion for driving social change through the arts.

Udi Aloni offers education and insight into amazing people, motivating you to learn more about them.

I recommend this film because it brings a lens onto the historical aspects of the Baraka family. I wish they had focused on the original subject, the mayoral race of Ras Barak.