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Filmmaker and musician James Spooner always felt like an outsider, and that’s not because of his piercings and bright red hair. Growing up in California and New York, Spooner was introduced to punk music when he was eight and fell in love with the genre’s energy, DIY attitude and rebeliousness. But as a black man he never felt like he quite fit in a punk scene that wasn’t very racially diverse.. “I just really wanted to look like my friends and fit in. Even if it meant rejecting my black identity. I know there are other black kids who are going through that too,” he told Nylon Magazine. Fortunately for us, Spooner had an epiphany and decided to explore just what it meant to be black and punk. His documentary, Afro-Punk: The Rock and Roll Nigger Experience, has been screened widely and gained kudos from the New York Times, Variety, Bust and about a dozen more publications. Here’s the synopsis:

“Afro-Punk, a 66-minute documentary, explores race identity within the punk scene. More than your everyday, Behind the Music or typical “black history month” documentary this film tackles the hard questions, such as issues of loneliness, exile, inter-racial dating and black power. We follow the lives of four people who have dedicated themselves to the punk rock lifestyle. They find themselves in conflicting situations, living the dual life of a person of color in a mostly white community.

The style of the documentary inter-cuts interviews from scores of black punk rockers from all over the nation with scenes from our four protagonists’ lives. They come from different regions, generations, genders, and sexual preferences but their stories are amazingly similar.

Afro-Punk features performances by Bad Brains, Tamar Kali, Cipher, and Ten Grand. It also contains exclusive interviews by members of Fishbone, 247- spyz, Dead Kennedys, Candiria, Orange 9mm and TV on the Radio to name a few.”

Upcoming screenings around the country can be found here.