Naked Acts

Cicely’s mum was a Blaxploitation icon akin to Pam Grier or Tamara Dobson, which means she grew up on film sets. As her memories of those days are more on the sour side, the last thing one would have expected from Cicely is that she would want to be an actress. Her mum certainly didn’t and she sure as hell isn’t happy when her stylishly clad daughter returns home after four years to talk about her future.

Of course, Cicely doesn’t do dubious movies like her mother’s – she’s working on an indie picture, which comes with its own set of challenges, one of them being that she’s suddenly supposed to appear nude in one scene… Trash or art: in the end the problems remain the same.

Naked Acts is a legend of Black US cinema, originally nobody wanted to distribute it but Bridgett M. Davis took things into her own hands and with a slow, small run she made it a relative success. For now, Naked Acts remains Davis’ sole fiction feature. Why wouldn’t one want to see more from a filmmaker capable of such subtleties and unforced kindness, a mind long on intelligence and short on attitude.

– Olaf Möller

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