A riveting account of an unnamed man whose racial identity is continually redrawn and contested by clusters of impassioned narrators.This intricately- edited, deeply political lm explores our new social landscape, one where cascades of disinformation, rumors, and insinuations spread wildly across electronic networks.
Most of the vlogs were made between 2009 and 2011, the early days of the Obama era, a period many hoped would signal improvement in race relations, but instead emboldened American’s racist underbelly and racial discord.This was enabled and aggravated by social media platforms, which were growing in popularity, and where rants, lies, emotion, and conspiracy theories spread wildly.
The film pays close attention to the language ordinary people use as they describe, judge, prescribe behaviors for, and variously attack or defend famous black men, all while defining the places and positions they think black men in America can and should occupy.
Now he’s out in public is a mediation on the fraught nature contemporary publicness, an area where torrents of competing voices produce echo chambers where bigoted and sensible expressions are often leveled, amplifying social divisions. Originally presented as a multi-channel gallery installation in 2012, Now he’s out in public and everyone can see was made into a film in 2017