James Spooner

James Spooner came in to film making with a passion to tell his story. He had managed to live 23 years of his life swinging from culture to culture, coast to coast, community to community but there was always deep sense of loss. He decided to look deeper into himself and what came from that was the 66-minute documentary Afro-Punk.

Afro-Punk explores race identity within the punk scene and tackles hard questions such as issues of loneliness, exile, inter-racial dating and black power. The film has been screened at festivals in the US and abroad, including the Toronto International Film Festival, New York’s Urbanworld Film Festival, the American Black Film Festival, and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Afro-Punk has also been incorporated into a program for high school students on race identity by the New Museum in New York.

Spooner is currently working on his second documentary, White Lies Black Sheep, in which a man is forced to reconsider his identity when challenged by the illusions of integration as he moves through the East Village and Brooklyn’s dark nightlife scene.