An Evening with Kahlil Joseph

Description

Join us for a presentation of short films and videos, art, and conversation with Kahlil Joseph. A recent Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts (2018) and visiting artist at Stanford University, Joseph continues to move between the worlds of film, video, and art with an ease that is rarely seen. Co-director of Beyonce’s Lemonade, winner of a Sundance directing award, participant in the upcoming Venice Biennale, Joseph has been carving out a place for himself as an auteur whose eclectic artistic modes–music video, installation, narrative, and nonfiction film–always lovingly celebrate Black culture while simultaneously addressing Black people’s precarious and complicated status in society at-large. This program will present a series of short works, including two new projects, interspersed with an onstage conversation that will delve into Joseph’s process, concerns, and trajectory.

Presented in collaboration with Headlands Center for the Arts.

Black Mary (2017, 6 min)
Commissioned by Tate Modern, Black Mary beautifully fuses Joseph’s documentary, performance, fiction, and music videos in a single, breathtaking presentation of the singer Alice Smith.

Fly Paper (2017, 23 min)
Perhaps your only chance to see this in San Francisco, the theater’s sound system will be specially configured for the presentation. Conceived as an art installation, Fly Paper features Ben Vereen, Storyboard P, and Lauryn Hill, among others. Inspired by Harlem Renaissance photographer Roy DeCarava, the film is a tribute to Joseph’s late father, Keven Davis.

Until the Quiet Comes (2012, 4 min)
Set to a track from Flying Lotus’s album and shot primarily in Nickerson Gardens, this short features the astonishingly beautiful dancing of Storyboard P. Winner of Sundance’s Special Jury Award for short film.

Wildcat (2013, 7 min)
Filmed in Grayson, Oklahoma, Wildcat meditatively combines documentation of a Black rodeo subculture with an abstract portrait of Joseph’s aunt who helped found the event.

“Joseph often shoots in black-and-white, which emphasizes the blackness of his subjects’ skin. His actors and models sit staring at the camera, iconic in their stillness. Or he observes them in slow motion, walking away from the camera, as if they were tired of being seen. A master of sound, he allows the dialogue and the music in his movies to drop out and then return at unexpected moments, creating a sometimes heart-stopping juxtaposition between what we hear and what we see.” – Hilton Als, The Black Excellence of Kahlil Joseph