In the Name of the Father: Creed, Mourning, and the Black Imagination

This essay asserts that when director Ryan Coogler's two earliest films, Fruitvale Station and Creed, are read together, the sustained engagement reveals how a Black radical imagination acknowledges and dignifies Black life in a context of anti-Black violence. Ultimately, the process that Coogler identifies and articulates in creating Apollo parallels the process of mourning Black lives through protest in a culture where the claim that Black lives matter amounts to resistance.