Black and White Trypps Number Four (2008)

• 67%
• 2008
• Ben Russell

Like the previous Trypp, Number Four is a concert film but back to the "historicized" black and white palate of the first two films. Because the concert footage is from Richard Pryor's standup act, the Black and White in the title also refers to race. But, almost as a rebuttal to Trypps Number Two, much of the footage here is presented in a Rorschach blot of negative and mirrored imagery so Pryor is portrayed as "white" as often as he is "black." And through the afterimage resulting from the aggressive flickering, colors emerge leading to, as Russell says, "black and white becoming a fiction - not only in terms of race, but with regard to the material itself.