Afro-Punk

Free admission! The screening will be followed by a conversation with director James Spooner, El/yse Ambrose (Associate Professor in the Department of Black Study and the Department for the Study of Religion), and Richard T. Rodríguez (Professor of English). The Afro-Punk documentary was the first film to ask Black punks about their lives. The conversation hasn't ended since.

Directed by James Spooner and released in 2003, the film follows Black punks and hardcore kids who existed at the margins of two worlds, invisible in mainstream Black culture and uncentered in the predominantly white alternative scenes they pioneered. Through intimate interviews, personal testimony, and four protagonists whose lives anchor the film, the film asks a simple question with no simple answer: what does it mean to be Black and punk?

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and went on to screen at more than 300 festivals, colleges, and community spaces worldwide. It was made without institutional backing on a self-financed budget, driven entirely by the communities it documented. That DIY origin became part of its identity. Afro-Punk did not just document a subculture, it named one.

The film is widely credited with galvanizing a dispersed community into a recognizable movement, and directly inspired what would become the AFROPUNK Festival, one of the largest celebrations of Black alternative culture in the world. Spooner has since departed from the festival, but the film that started it all remains his.

In 2026, more than two decades after its release, a Kickstarter campaign to restore Afro-Punk surpassed its funding goal by more than three times, a measure of how much the film still means to the people who grew up with it. The restoration completes the professional color correction and sound mix that were financially out of reach during the original production, realizing the presentation the film always deserved while preserving the rawness that made it matter.

This is Afro-Punk as it was always intended to be seen. About James Spooner James Spooner is an award winning graphic novelist, filmmaker and tattoo artist. His debut graphic novel, The High Desert was named "Best of 2022" by Publishers Weekly, The Washington Post and The New York Public Library. The High Desert is the 2023 recipient of the American Library Association's Alex Award and the Cartoonist Studio Prize.

Spooner co-edited an anthology of Black punk writers and comic creators entitled, Black Punk Now. Available now, the book was named in the top 10 Music Books of 2023 by Pitchfork, top 5 Music Books from the Guardian and received a Kirkus star. Pantheon has acquired his forthcoming book It Starts With Anger, set for publication in Aug of 2026. He was recently commissioned to adapt a story by the Scottish Book Trust and is regular contributor to RazorCake Magazine.

Spooner directed the seminal documentary Afro-Punk which premiered at national and international film festivals…