One of the most remarkable moments in director Charles Burnett’s classic 1978 film, Killer of Sheep, comes when he abruptly cuts from images of slaughtered sheep to a shot of carefree children running down a Los Angeles street. In a single cut, Burnett captures everything he wants to say about being black in America. In the new documentary What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire?, director Roberto Minervini creates a moment nearly as potent.
In the first scene, we watch members of the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense protest outside of a police station in Jackson, Mississippi. Though the police believe the brutal murder of a local man and a hate crime against a family on the same block on the same night are unrelated, the Panthers believe the opposite after canvassing the neighborhood and speaking to the locals. Filmed in the summer of 2017 in the midst of a series of racially motivated deaths in the South and across America, the protesters are understandably angry at what they see as the police’s disinterest. Their leader separates from the group, becoming increasingly indignant as she yells at the police gathered just behind the station doors, but just as her anger crescendos, Minervini and editor Marie-Hélène Dozo suddenly cut to 14-year-old Ronaldo King searching for his younger brother Titus Turner in what appears to be a junkyard.
We know from earlier scenes that 9-year-old Titus is simply taking their game of hide-and-seek too far by refusing to come out even after Ronaldo gives up, but the more worried Ronaldo becomes, the more worried the audience becomes too. Remembering how adamantly their mother Ashlei King warned them to come home well before the streetlights came on because of shootings in their neighborhood a few weeks before, it’s hard not to fear the worst. And while Titus does eventually reappear, safe and sound, the tension of that moment is hard to shake because of the quiet power of Minervini’s film.
Unfolding gradually over a two-hour runtime and filmed in gorgeous black and white by cinematographer Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos, What You Gonna Do feels Shakespearean in scale even though it follows the everyday lives of regular people. Set mostly in New Orleans, Minervini paints a picture of what it means to be black in America in a meandering way that slowly immerses the viewer in this world. He jumps from Panther meetings, to the boys brushing their hair, to Kevin Goodman, a Mardi Gras Indian Chief sewing ceremonial dress. The film could easily feel directionless and some viewers will likely grow frustrated with the slow pacing. Luckily, it’s hard to grow bored of Minervini’s fascinating subjects.
Arguably the most captivating is Judy Hill, a woman struggling to save the bar she owns from the slow march of gentrification. A former addict who cleaned herself up years prior, watching her talk about the effects of systemic racism with her bar patrons, she’s passionate and direct. Listening to her feels like gaining access to a fountain of wisdom—one Judy herself later suggests comes from her trauma. Hearing Judy tell a fellow addict about not just her former drug use, but her sexual assault by a family member as a child, it’s stunning to contrast her vulnerability there with the scene a few minutes earlier, where she sings at the bar on its closing night and looks resplendent and powerful in a sequined dress.
Indeed, there and throughout, the variety and frankness of the footage Minervini collects is what makes What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? so striking. Minervini’s camera doesn’t so much intrude on his subjects’ lives as feel like a conduit for the audience to be in the room with them. We understand their emotions and their experience and in turn, we understand just how much they’re up against. The footage we see may be from two years prior, but what it says about blackness in America feels timeless.
