Black Code/Code noir

Louis Henderson analyses the lingering racial violence in the United States by drawing on the recent murders of Mike Brown and Kajieme Powell by the police. To try and chart its genealogy and describe its development, the director uses the notion of “code” and its polysemic dimension. Denoting both a legal decree and an algorithmic rule, the code is seen as underpinning necropolitical power. Henderson’s discourse hinges on the articulation, embedding and superposition of disparate images and sounds taken from the Internet in order to propose a critical perspective of Afro-American history. The only moment of hope is the repetition of the beginning of Humberto Solás’ Simparele (1974), where singer Martha Jean-Claude calls on the pride and independence of the Haitian people… (Jessica Macor)