A year after his supporting role in the blockbuster Shaft, Christopher St. John wrote, directed, and starred in this kaleidoscopic fever dream of a Black cop’s crisis of sanity after being passed over for a promotion, and the death of his mother.

With dreamlike imagery depicting St. John’s George Lattimer as a war hero, astronaut, and other representations of American idealism, the film tackles the contradiction of a Black man who follows the ‘rules’ in a position of power, only to find himself trapped in the same impossible position he was in before joining the police. Top of the Heap is an underrated twist on Blaxploitation cinema, and an essential piece of American independent film, free of studio interference and muddled messaging.

“As written, the film is punctuated by escapist visions in which Lattimer pictures himself a revered astronaut in a lacquered 2001-esque space station, but outer space isn’t far enough to elude the earthly news of his mother’s death; the only approaching celestial “voyage” on his itinerary is to her funeral in rural Alabama. In this dark substitution, the film reckons not only with systemic prejudice but the cosmic menace of aging and death—or rather, demonstrates Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism as “the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”’ ~ Veronica Fitzpatrick, Screen Slate

Screening 3/4 & 3/21

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