BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
Description
Distinguished filmmaker, music video director, and multimedia artist Kahlil Joseph returns to SFFILM with his first feature. Building on An Evening with Kahlil Joseph (Festival 2019) and his stated intent to present Black stories outside the constraints of traditional media narratives, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions takes us on an Afrofuturist oceanliner back to Africa. The Nautica is a beautiful vessel full of music, art installations, and welcoming spaces that encourages passengers to reconcile their personal history within a broader cultural context. Sarah (Shaunette Renée Wilson), an undercover journalist, leads the audience with reportings of activities aboard the ship. Her observations are punctuated by work from artists like Senga Nengudi, Garrett Bradley, Raven Jackson, Ja’Tovia Gary, and Alex Bell. Joseph employs his remarkable versatility to seamlessly weave together archival footage, YouTube and social media content, personal memoir, historical references, and more to offer a kaleidoscopic exploration of the Black experience. This sonic and visually immersive essayistic blend of documentary and fiction is difficult to categorize and not to be missed. A celebration of Black culture deftly crafted by an artist at his zenith. —Jessie Fairbanks
Biographies
Seattle-born and Los Angeles-based Kahlil Joseph (An Evening with Kahlil Joseph, Festival 2019) is a filmmaker, writer, and artist. His short Flying Lotus: Until the Quiet Comes (2013) received a Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize and he was a co-director of Beyoncé’s Lemonade (2016). Among his other films are Wildcat (2013), Fly Paper (2017), and Black Mary (2018). He has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, the Tate Modern, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, The Underground Museum, the Hammer Museum, the Huntington, and more.
Activist, filmmaker, and musician Boots Riley studied film at San Francisco State University before rising to prominence as the frontman of hip-hop groups The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. His debut feature, Sorry to Bother You (2018), won the Film Independent Spirit Awards’ Best First Feature prize and SFFILM’s Kanbar Award. His most recent work, I’m a Virgo, was nominated for a Gotham Award and four Independent Spirit Awards. He is currently finishing I Love Boosters, starring Keke Palmer and Demi Moore. His book of lyrics and anecdotes, Tell Homeland Security-We Are The Bomb, is out on Haymarket Press.
