'The Third Part of the Third Measure' creates an encounter with the militant minimalism of avant-garde composer, pianist and vocalist Julius Eastman. The two-channel video installation focuses on what The Otolith Group (Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun) describe as an “experience of watching in the key of listening”, invoking political feelings of defiance and the collective practice of movement building that participates in the global struggles against neoreactionary authoritarianism. Their work invites viewers to attend to exemplary ecstatic aesthetics of black radicalism that Eastman himself once described as “full of honor, integrity and boundless courage”. (Berlinale brochure)
Official Selection Berlinale 2018 - Forum Expanded Exhibition - "A Mechanism Capable of Changing Itself" - Group exhibition at Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg
A young woman visits home and just as she's about to ring the bell, the aroma of food evokes a powerful memory which takes her back to her childhood and it also reminds her of her fabricated past.
Official Selection Rotterdam International Film Festival 2018 - World premiere
Exploring the magic and dynamism of Blackness in a realm where time and space are altered. The now, the past and the future are rethought and reordered to create something soulful and mindbendingly visceral.
Funk Queen Betty Davis changed the landscape for female artists in America. She “was the first…” as former husband Miles Davis said. “Madonna before Madonna, Prince before Prince”. An aspiring songwriter from a small steel town, Betty arrived on the '70s scene to break boundaries for women with her daring personality, iconic fashion and outrageous funk music. She befriended Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, wrote songs for the Chambers Brothers and the Commodores, and married Miles – startlingly turning him from jazz to funk on the album she named “Bitches Brew”. She then, despite being banned and boycotted, went on to become the first black woman to perform, write and manage herself.
Betty was a feminist pioneer, inspiring and intimidating in a manner like no woman before. Then suddenly - she just vanished. Betty Mabry Davis is a global icon whose mysterious life story has until now, never been told. Creatively blending documentary, animation and nonfiction techniques, this movie traces the path of Betty’s life, after years of trying, the elusive Betty, forever the free-spirited Black Power Goddess, finally allowed the filmmakers to creatively tell her story based on their conversations.
Official Selection IDFA 2017 - World premiere
An ensemble slice of life in a diner, where rap lyrics become part of the drama.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Create Strand - World premiere
'Relic 1' forms part of Larry Achiampong's Relic Traveller: Phase 1, a multi-disciplinary project manifesting in performance, audio, moving image and prose.
Taking place across various landscapes and locations, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.
With the help of The Advisor, a husband and wife must answer three seemingly harmless questions to create their perfect designer baby.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2018 - Shorts Program - World premiere
A short essay film by artist animator, Jessica Ashman. Using animation and recorded interviews of eight other women of colour artists, the film explores navigating the visual art and animation world as a black face in a white space.
Emmott and Rowland were sweethearts whose romance played out in the village of Eyam during the Plague of 1665/1666. Theirs was a sad and romantic tragedy, which has captured the imagination of those who read about it over the following hundreds of years.
