Cinema: In the Streets

Right On! and Skezag are two cries of pain from the ghetto streets, brutal nonfiction films about what it means to be poor and black. In Right On!, three young men who call themselves the Original Last Poets face the camera with coolly controlled rage, chanting their lacerating lyrics of defiance, a street-corner compendium of jive, gospel and blank verse. "Die, niggas," sings one, "die, niggas, so black folks can take over!" Producer-Director Herbert Danska photographed the group on the streets and rooftops of Harlem and the Lower East Side, but his attempts to interweave their poetry with documentary footage...

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