In a series we are calling Criminally Forgotten, we pluck out discarded, overlooked or misunderstood gems from the past. In this episode, we unearth a relic from the archives, Bill Gunn's 1973 art/horror/vampire movie Ganja & Hess . Gunn, a literate, smart, cultured person who came from the Theatre and the literary arts was tasked with replicating the immense success of the iconic African-American vampire film, Blacula (1972). What he produced instead was a complete departure from the tropes of the vampire genre, creating a meditative, artistic, dream like movie that utilizes what some critics have called, "Haptic visualization". The writer Donato Totaro describes Haptic cinema as;
"... unlike Western ocularcentrism, which values sight as the greatest epistemological sense, intercultural cinema embraces the proximal senses (smell, taste, touch) as a means for embodying knowledge and cultivating memory” (Donato Totaro, Canadian Journal of Film Studies)
Ganja & Hess has been cited as an important film in the African-American canon, as it dispels stereotypes of Blaxploitation and African-American culture promoting an art house, experimental style more notable in Foreign cinema at the time. Join Azed and Tom as they discuss this unique horror film...just in time for Halloween!!
"If Shaft is Barry White and Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is the Sex Pistols, then Ganja & Hess is John Cage". Jaime N. Christley, Slant Magazine
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