Avec la volonté de déconstruire les mythes persisants sur la sexualité de l’homme noir, le film mélange les conventions de genre et un commentaire sur la société, afin de créer une exploration hautement symbolique des programmes psycho-sexuells de l’époque. Même si’il a été estampillé comme un film de la Blaxploitation (avec une sortie en vidéo sous le titre « Soul Vengeance », en français « Vengeance de l’âme »), le premier long métrage de Fanaka est un conte subversif concçue comme la revanche d’un homme africain américain humilié et caricaturé par un establishment blanc corrompu.

Réalisateur : Jamaa Fanaka

USA, 1975, Fiction, 1h31 min, 35mm, couleur,

Setting out to challenge persistent myths around black male sexuality, the film combines genre conventions with social commentary creating a highly symbolic exploration of the psycho-sexual politics of the time. Although marketed as a Blaxploitation film (and released on video with the title Soul Vengeance), Fanaka’s first feature is a subversive revenge tale of an African American man humiliated and framed by a corrupt white establishment. Fanaka’s cult film plays out the revenge as a commentary on white fears of inter-racial relationships, masculine insecurity and the persistent objectification of black bodies.

Jamaa Fanaka was a singular figure at UCLA and he created some of the most powerful films of the period. While still a student he wrote, directed and produced three features that got theatrical distribution, concluding with the first in the now classic Penitentiary series. Made with a minimal budget against the advice of his tutors, Welcome Home, Brother Charles was made with a crew drawn from ULCA including fellow students Charles Burnett and Ben Caldwell. With raw and visceral energy the film inverts genre conventions to create a highly expressive and unexpected psycho sexual.

dir. Jamaa Fanaka, USA 1975, 35mm, colour, 91 min

Welcome Home, Brother Charles is a brutal and at times fantastic allegory of endemic racism in America in the 1970s.