NYU Black Renaissance Noire NYU Black Renaissance Noire V. 16.1 | Page 11

Well, our discovery did not change the
world, and it took blood spilt in the
streets and mountains of our country
to make the colonial state come
round to our discovery and accept one
person one vote. But my brother and
I knew this: if they had accepted our
simple proof, there would have been
no bloodshed, no Mau Mau, no
concentration camps. Unfortunately,
he did not live long to enjoy the
morning after the vote. I lost him to a
car accident.
Years later after I had all but forgotten
our shadowy contest, I went for a film
course in Stockholm’s Dramatiska
Institutet. We were twelve students
drawn from the different parts of the
world, all excited at the prospects of
mastering the camera and the
Hollywood mystery at an institute that
had produced the greatest of Swedish
cinema, Ingmar Bergman.

He stopped by Rembrandt’s the
Blinding of Samson and Night Watch
and told us to look at them carefully.
I did not see why he made us look at
such violence for our very first lesson
in film.
He wanted us to note the way the artist
used light. See the source of the light?
Light source, whether sun in the
day or moon at night, or fire inside or
outside a house, and the time, yes,
the time or even the passage, through
the window, or a crack in the wall,
determined how shadows fell on the
subject. In religious painting, God was
the universal source of light. In Geert
tot Sint Jans’ Nativity at Night, the
child Jesus was the source of the light
that illuminated everything around
him. Varsagod. He dwelt a little longer
on Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa,
pointing out the way the artist had
subtly shaded the ears and mouth to
effect the mystery smile.

Then, he talked about the chiaroscuro
in art, photography and the cinema,
and talked of a Marisi de Caravaggio,
another Michelangelo, as the apostle
of light, citing his Matthew trio of
Calling Saint Matthew; The Martyrdom
of Saint Matthew; and The inspiration
of Saint Matthew, in Contralli Chapel
in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi
in Rome.
The shadow defines the identity of
being. The original cinema, he pointed
out, was a play of shadows, where
performers and their actions behind
a screen came across to the audience as
shadows. Plato’s allegory of the
cave was shadography, well, oral
cinematography…
I stood still, not listening. The image of
the brother I lost to a car accident soon
after the discovery which, had it not
been ignored, could have altered the
course of history, came back. It dawned
on me, all at once, that it was Njinjũ,
my little brother, in my village, long
ago, who gave me my first lesson in art
and film. n
(For Mũmbi Wanjikũ Ngũgı̃ )
Cape Town, Table Mountain, South Africa
June 11 – 22, 2012

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

My brother quickly announced our real
find. White, brown, and black people
were equal. Proof. We had shaken
hands with white people, and there was
not a single difference between their
shadows and ours. Ours and theirs
were equally dark. This did not wow
our listeners. It seemed that people
were more interested in our encounter
with the white couple than our
momentous conclusion.

The teacher entered the class. We would
learn later that he was a famous film
director, an exile who, as a student,
had run from the Hungarian revolt
in 1956. He spoke English hesitantly,
interspersing every other sentence with
Varsogod, mycket bra, but it was clear
that he was telling us to follow him.
We were going to a studio, we thought,
our first visit to a real film studio.
But the mystery destination deepened,
when we went outside the building
into the cobbled streets of Stockholm.
It was spring. Everybody was dressed
in bright colors. After a bit of walking,
we entered a gallery, an art museum,
not the Hollywood type studio of
our dreams.

9

The time came. We stood side by side.
Sepulchral silence. Expectations.
We had just made a great discovery,
we said in unison. Everything carried
a shadow. The announcement was
greeted with sniggers, and a few, so
what? The drama was slipping from us.
I responded quickly: Humans, animals,
plants, stones and things, were kins:
they all had shadows. Children, are
you saying that we are stones?