James Spooner

Who is James Spooner?

James Spooner is the director of Afro-Punk, a documentary film exploring race identity in the punk scene. He produced his film mostly out of New York, having had no previous training in film. As a DIY effort, he rigorously toured the film across the country like a band, showing it as many venues as possible, and rapidly amassing a devoted cult following, largely among minority punks centralized around a message board on his website afropunk.com.

He also has another feature film called White Lies Black Sheep, which is more a fictional dramatization of the same concept. It premiered at Toronto international Film Fest and is on the festival circuit now.

He was born in the Caribbean nation of Saint Lucia, but grew up in America on both coasts with a black father and white mother. All his life he was part of the predominantly Eurocentric punk scene, but had always considered himself to be black, despite being the only biracial kid in his family and his siblings often referring to him as "their white brother". After visiting his birthplace in the predominantly black St. Lucia for the first time since toddlerhood however, he began to reevaluate himself culturally.