‘Dear White People,’ About Racial Hypocrisy at a College

“Dear White People,” the Sundance Festival breakout movie is creating waves in more ways than one.

Justin Simien’s first feature film, “Dear White People” was described by New York Times film critic A.O. Scott as one of the smartest and most fearless debuts in a long time: “knowing but not snarky, self-aware but not solipsistic, open to influence and confident in its own originality. It’s a clever campus comedy that juggles a handful of hot potatoes — race, sex, privilege, power — with elegant agility and only an occasional fumble.”

The film’s official website offers the following:

Winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent, Dear White People is a sly, provocative satire of race relations in the age of Obama. Writer/director Justin Simien follows a group of African American students as they navigate campus life and racial politics at a predominantly white college in a sharp and funny feature film debut that earned him a spot on Variety’s annual “10 Directors to Watch.” When Dear White People screened at MOMA’s prestigious New Directors/New Films, the New York Times’ A.O. Scott wrote, “Seeming to draw equal measures of inspiration from Whit Stillman and Spike Lee, but with his own tart, elegant sensibility very much in control, Mr. Simien evokes familiar campus stereotypes only to smash them and rearrange the pieces.”

The Frisky writes that “In the wake of Ferguson and Trayvon Martin, the Indiegogo-funded movie is an incredibly important cinematic moment for Americans, a college-set ‘Do the Right Thing’ for the social media era.”

Whereas Spike Lee’s tour de force helped generate a dialogue about race at a time when police violence was becoming the norm, Simien’s film recognizes that we’re still dealing with the same cultural baggage over two decades later. It’s a movie that everyone should not only see, but encourage everyone else to see. Here’s some good reasons why.

Below, you can watch Anatomy of a Scene | ‘Dear White People’ in which the writer and director Justin Simien narrates a sequence from his film featuring Tessa Thompson followed by the theatrical trailer for the movie.

Official Theatrical Trailer:

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‘Dear White People,’ About Racial Hypocrisy at a College – VIDEO