REDISCOVERING
FANON
ABOUT
Rediscovering Fanon explores the enduring truths of race articulated by Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) — the revolutionary psychiatrist and anti-colonial thinker born in Martinique, educated in France, and practicing psychiatry in Algeria — whose writings inspired The Battle of Algiers and shaped the Black Panther Party. The film spotlights the peril of black lives under systemic racism in the United States and across the globe.
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Featuring interviews with Fanon’s daughter, Mireille Fanon-Mendès-France; his son, Olivier Fanon; and leading scholars such as Professor Lewis R. Gordon and Dr. Alice Cherki, the film revisits tragedies from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd and the January 6 Capitol attack. It reflects on Fanon’s life while underscoring his fierce opposition to racism, his call for liberation, and his vision of a new humanity.
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Blending interviews, archival footage, dramatizations, and music by Tupac Shakur and Nina Simone — along with an original score by jazz pianist Lafayette Harris — this independent social-justice documentary revives Fanon’s revolutionary humanism for a new generation.
"We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe."
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- Frantz Fanon (1963)
"I can't breathe."
- Eric Garner (2014)
DIRECTOR
Rico Speight is a filmmaker, producer-director, writer, and educator whose work spans film, television, and theater.
His documentaries include The People United, Who’s Gonna Take the Weight?, Where Are They Now?, and New Generation.
His narrative projects include Defiant (starring David Adams and Jeffrey White), Choices (Hillary Martin Jones, Samuel Jackson), and Adjunct’s Agony.
His theater directing credits include Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo and Robeson and Dunham: Art & Activism 101, which he also wrote and produced.
An IATSE editor, his editing credits include Reggie Life’s Reunion (Denzel Washington), William Greaves’ Frederick Douglass: An American Life, Spookies (by Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran), and Josephine Meets the Sky (by Virginia Rankin).
He has worked as a control room director at CUNY TV, NYU-TV, and WGBH-TV, and has taught film and television production, editing, aesthetics, and control-room directing at Sarah Lawrence College, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, NYU School of Professional Studies, Pratt Institute, Hunter College, City College of New York, Third World Newsreel, and the New York African Film Festival.
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Connect
Email: info@rediscoveringfanon.com
Third World Newsreel
Third World Newsreel (TWN) is an alternative media arts organization that fosters the creation, appreciation and dissemination of independent film and video by and about people of color and social justice issues.