Last night I scampered down to the IFC Center to take in Stacy Peralta’s incendiary documentary CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA. I’ve got two reviews, one of the film itself, and one of the night. I don’t know if any of you have ever been unexpectedly ‘wing-manned’, but if you have I only pray that you don’t find yourself stranded at an indie theater with a couple of MOVIE TALKERS. Delightful people for sure, but nobody cares to hear your opinions halfway through the film. Well, I don’t, that’s for sure.

On to the film, which was incredible. Mr. Peralta, whose previous work includes DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS and RIDING GIANTS, has a knack for getting right down at street level, for humanizing previously stereotypical characters and immersing you in a fully-realized world. The film opens with one of the best first shots I’ve seen in awhile — a vertigo-inducing tumble above downtown Los Angeles which starts upside-down and, though eventually landing us upright, leaves the viewer filled with a distasteful panic. All that concrete…anxious and disorienting. The world that houses, and in too many ways to ignore createdthe deadly Bloods and Crips street gangs.

Which is the point. Peralta traces the causes of the epidemic of gang violence in South Central LA back through the years, all the way to WWII, and the African-American community’s exodus from southern farms to big cities. For a time they found steady work, better pay, and the American Dream seemed to be reachable, or at least some watered-down version of such. But the war ended, the jobs faded away, and children were left to figure out how to get by in a world that held LESS opportunities for them than it did for their parents. The fact of the matter is, a displaced people were then further displaced over a decades-long intentional confinement to neighborhoods that were under-resourced and over-policed (don’t get me started on the LAPD…), and then when the situation boiled over, were condemned as irredeemable, violent, and expendable. This was not a Los Angeles specific phenomenon. Riots in Chicago, New York and Miami showed that plainly enough in the 1960’s. But the scariest realization of our shared culpability in the mini-war we allow to continue, a war that’s seen more than FOUR TIMES the deaths of Northern Ireland and the IRA’s four decade offensive, is how utterly preventable it all is. I teared up when one former original gang member made it plain: every strong, well-spoken and public figure this community had was either imprisoned, sent away, or murdered during the 60’s and 70’s. So the children of the 80’s came along with all the same fire and rage, and had no one to look up to. A void exists to be filled. If you can’t look up, you’ll look down. And in LA, ‘down’ is all around you.

So please do see this movie. The ex-gang members, gang activists, educators and current Crips and Bloods are honest and insightful, yet utterly without illusions of a quick answer. I left the theater enraged at our shared oppressive history. This is a problem that isn’t going away. Nearly 70% of African-American children are raised without a father figure. Over 40% of our prison population is African-American. And the current economic conditions hurt the poorest of us FAR more than the richest, regardless of the corporate whining. If you want to do something concrete about this issue, there’s several organizations connected with the project that take donations of time and money. Check out the film’s OFFICIAL SITE for a full list. And the next time you’re in a theater and you turn around, horrified at the girl several rows back who decides to take a phone call while people are baring their souls on screen, don’t take it out on the guy next to her. He may just be an accidental wingman, and hate it just as much as you.