Race Is a Four-Letter Word

In Sobaz Benjamin's confessional documentary Race Is a Four-Letter Word, which explores difficulties blacks face finding acceptance in Canadian society, the filmmaker reveals his own problems with coming to terms with his multifaceted background (a black “Afro-Saxon” Briton, then Grenadian, and now Haligonian-Nova Scotian-Canadian), detailing the extreme steps he's taken to try to fit in—even going so far as to try to bleach the color from his skin with chemicals. Benjamin also looks at the stories of three other subjects: an immigrant woman from England who ultimately finds Canada's promise of equality to be so false that she returns to Europe; a performance artist who takes on the character of a beauty queen to test, and perhaps prove, the idea that an African-Canadian can be accepted and even celebrated in such a role; and—most fascinating—a white man named Tim Dunn, who was raised by a black family and feels more of a racial kinship to them than his biological parents. Some may find the raw emotion unsettling—people literally break down here while confronting their pasts—and the joint modeling exercises in which Sobaz and Dunn shed their clothes and don masks in order to work through their inhibitions seem rather strange. But if Race Is a Four-Letter Word comes across as a somewhat disorderly, even eccentric treatment of the social realities blacks face in Canada, the intensity of its subjects as they struggle toward self-understanding carries considerable power. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)