Document

I was in the edit, and the edit's not working, so I'm banging my head against the wall. And I remember asking my dad, my brother, for help, which, you know, people who've lost loved ones, you can just, like, private moments sometimes you have, grandmas, et cetera. And at one point, I realized in my studio, that there was a doc, there was an encyclopedia. I'd actually never seen one. I didn't grow up with one in my house, it just happened to be there. And so I opened it up, 00:00:30 Speaker 1 and inside was an inscription from my dad to my brother. And I was floored, of course. And it was interesting, because the book hadn't been policed, no one had actually, my brother didn't like that book. And I realized, like, oh, this was a gift that my dad was giving to me from into the future. to finish my film there's a moment people have asked me like hey what um sadia hartman wrote that. 00:01:06 Speaker 1 line and people have asked me in q a is like oh hello dude how do you remember the future i don't know how to answer that question but i realized like oh my dad and my brother even were it seems like this thing was destined for me to find in order to help me finish my film and so when i saw that it was a um i did an early early screening of the film and god bless him uh it's i think there's something called friends and families where you invite people that you trust and uh i. It opens with a burst of excitement: Speaker 4’s remix of Kanye West’s “Cousins” has racked up thousands of views on Xvideos, prompting chaotic, funny riffs about posting art on adult platforms and navigating shadow bans and formatting across social media. Amid the jokes, Speaker 4 shares an earnest intention to get music onto Spotify via DistroKid, perform before year’s end, and keep making work that serves the world. The group trades updates—website plans, skipping class—and drops a shocking note about a restraining order involving a teacher, before offering advice on relationships and attachment. 00:01:40 Speaker 1 was you know i invited spike jones and spike jones you know culturally adjacent or removed the content of the film i didn't ever explain who the boys was in the early cuts assuming everyone. it's like you know so i remember after the screening it was really horrible it was so devastating one of the worst nights of my life and god bless mike jones because he came up to me and. 00:02:11 Speaker 1 was like you know you know yeah you know it's hard and uh he's like uh if you don't mind me that's like who's the old guy i mean we don't actually say his name i'm thinking we do now but at the time there was no this is the boys and he's i i i put that in there because i realized people don't know who this guy is and so that whole opening section was me just being very almost. 00:02:47 Speaker 1 elementary with it and that is where this conversation with my family or my dad. 00:02:53 Speaker 2 from second petersburg it's amazing there's a moment in there with the boys where you just, dropped that he started the project at 93 years old and I was like man what type of faith does that take to start something at 93 and it made me feel that he was remembering you like he's remembering this sort of continuation of that project of like mapping blackness and the way. 00:03:22 Speaker 1 you're mapping blackness you know well so the underground museum is a space in LA I touched on it briefly in the film and so my brother it was my brother's vision really my it was my dad's dream and my brother's vision and so neither one of them actually saw the underground as I saw it or you saw it or anybody who's been there I saw my brother passed away before the public walked into the walked into the space and so it mirrored Du Bois's like and there's like a there's. 00:03:57 Speaker 1 There's something happening in black history, if you want to call it history, where a lot of black people have dreams and visions that are carried out by subsequent generations. But we see them as great heroes, and very often, if you were to ask them, boy, they would consider themselves failures. So I thought that was really a fascinating, something we carry with us, like, I don't really have words for it, really. 00:04:26 Speaker 2 You said this one thing to me a long time ago, you probably don't remember, but you're like, you got to know how to fail. 00:04:31 Speaker 1 I said that. 00:04:32 Speaker 2 You said that to me, it was like, this was a long time ago, you were talking about, you told some story about somebody, like, failing with flair. It was really interesting, but I'm reminded of that, when thinking about, like, how he might have seen his own, like, you know, obviously you show him in a state where he felt like he failed, you know, the boy, you know. 00:04:49 Speaker 1 He says that to the end of his life. His life's project was to fix the Negro problem. and he spent his whole life trying to use a scientific method if he just provided the facts, he believed that the world would and that's where fumi and her character comes into play uh there, there's there's this belief in the film of reincarnation which obviously tibetan believe in a lot of west african religions a lot of religions and people in the world believe in. 00:05:21 Speaker 1 reincarnation so the the basic law of reincarnation is that you reincarnate in your surrounding so if you were to die in new york you're not going to reincarnate in jamaica you're going to reincarnate in the northeast and the boys dies in ghana so i i just he's going to be reincarnated in west africa and the thing about reincarnation is you can you continue the work whatever you do that's why the dalai lama just keep doing what they do and so the boy is in this case it's a woman. 00:05:55 Speaker 1 continuing to work but they've abandoned she's abandoned uh the scientific there's a thing in. 00:06:03 Speaker 2 the movie that i think if you haven't heard anything about it before you come see it is it's really eye-opening which is the gender play aspect that kind of comes from this reincarnation thing and i want you to talk about how how you play with that characterization and imagining what it would be like to have this character that has many beings many genders and from and then when you're directing keneza like how did you like create a shared language how did you. 00:06:33 Speaker 2 you know make that performance just at a directing level um i i really this is where i'm really. 00:06:42 Speaker 1 impressed with shana because i i approached this process and i remember sharing this with her i was like i'm approaching this like an album and i classically trained she's like has all these skills, And I'm like, I kind of want you to be a jazz musician. And she was like, cool. And Keneza was very similar. And everybody was Bradford Young, all the directors. And for me, what that means is in film, very often it's very prescriptive. 00:07:16 Speaker 1 So a lot of people don't have room to really do stuff, try stuff, especially in the skilled positions. Depending upon who you work with, a lot of strong directors, you kind of are there to do it. And I was interested in sharing my vision or the world that I was interested in exploring and seeing what they would do because I think they're fly, you know, which seems to be more of a musical approach to get to work with your favorite musicians. 00:07:47 Speaker 1 You know, you want them to be them. You don't want them to say these lyrics like this. Nah, Raekwon, you go. you know like and try to like if i'm lucky you'll really fly so that's how i approach. 00:08:01 Speaker 2 i think like a lot of people you know you're kind of like the mad lib of editing like you know what i'm saying like you know you talked a lot about sampling and bringing that into cinema before but you know as a person also as an editor and you know hopefully some filmmakers in the room who edit as well can you get a little into the micro because i i remember one time i don't remember when it was but you were editing black news and you were you know you're kneel dropping. 00:08:32 Speaker 2 showing bits of it you're like this is more like my mumble take and you were referencing like how rappers kind of write with a mumble track and they go back and they refine it with actual words singers too. And, you know, it's like a, it's a technique, you know what I mean, that you're kind of like actually bridging how music is made into how you edit, you know, and it's related to how people make hip hop, obviously. So can you just share whatever, you know, your approach when you sit down and premiere, you know. 00:09:07 Speaker 1 Yeah, so Black News is an, the film is an adaptation of the artwork that I started in 2018. So I had a, I had something I would just reference, you know, it's like a novel. It's like, it's there. And Black News, the artwork is full of all these incredible moments, internet, some stuff is political media, but most of it. And I remember when I decided to like do a Hollywood thing and Hollywood was involved. In my mind, I'm like, how do I do what they do? But I kept realizing, like, they were wondering how I was going to do it. 00:09:47 Speaker 1 do something different and at that point i just kind of closed the door and just kind of had fun, and just try to i mean some of the some of those scenes are still in here where i was like what can i edit that would never be in a holiday like sequences that just don't make any sense it makes sense to me but i don't need them to have like some arc or you know and a lot of the sequences are like the godard scene when paul i was godard had just died and i remember there's a scene. 00:10:20 Speaker 1 chanette's in the movie theater and i was like oh she needs to you know those are green screens so i was like she needs to be watching something and so um i just i i just you know i'm sure it's like writing lyrics for this because there's any music in the house which is like so different from screenwriting i was interested in like lyricism like a lot of people love frank ocean's music. 00:10:48 Speaker 2 You catch the vibe, you know, I think, I mean, this is, I think the third time I've seen it as a full movie. And this time particularly, it really felt like I was on the Osiris, like we were on the boat. And I think those scenes when they're watching the movies in the Cinematheque, it kind of contributes to that. And something about this idea, like, you know, you drop the thing about the brother in the backseat, like you keep all your art in the museum, that don't seem safe. 00:11:18 Speaker 2 And then the fact that now the art is on the boat so it can move around, you know, and like not get caught, I guess. It's like a lot of that stuff hit as a vibe because I think of just the feeling of being here with y'all in a big theater. So my last question before I throw it to y'all is I felt like the setting of the film is the Atlantic Ocean, you know, and the Atlantic Ocean is like. a symbol is like a graveyard and it's a wormhole it's a space-time portal just as a point of fact. 00:11:56 Speaker 2 in a way and i just wanted you know talk about what that felt like for you as a person who is kind of like a product of the atlantic in a way like you kind of narrated it you know how your, ancestry is a product of that space-time portal of that ocean and maybe the atlantic ocean is kind of just as a symbol super operative maybe more so than other oceans you know but it felt really strong in this in this watch that lived for me oh that's a really good question um i'm trying to. 00:12:31 Speaker 1 i've heard some really smart thoughts about it from collaborators one of uh so we had a writer's room which is really strange for a movie uh and we had guests who would stop by, invite guests, but also people they wanted to stop by and Fred Moten, who teaches here at NYU, was one of the invited guests. We invited him to kind of riff, there was a wall full of stuff, like images, text, interesting books, all kind of stuff. 00:13:07 Speaker 1 We kept using the word like diaspora, and I remember at one point he was like, man, I hate that fucking word. Okay, say more. And he's like, I'm paraphrasing, please don't quote me. I'm never, I'm never trying to say, Fred said this, but some version of what Fred said in my mind. He's like, I don't like it as a noun, but maybe as a verb, there's something there. And we went on to unpack it a little more, and ultimately it's like something that we do. 00:13:44 Speaker 1 a racialized group in the world, the globe, but it's not something that really set in motion. The film allowed me to move all over the place all the time, which is something that you get in the ocean, versus being on land. Like once you put something in the ocean, it's gone. You throw a bottle in there, it's gone. 00:14:15 Speaker 2 You said a whale is gone in like three days. That's crazy. 00:14:18 Speaker 1 That's Christina Sharpe. And once I started to wrap my head around that, I don't know. I don't know what the word is, diasporine. I don't know what to ask for it. But it really got me excited and the group about what that looks like and how it watered. 00:14:42 Speaker 2 Who's first. 00:15:24 Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, you're not the first person to say that. 00:15:42 Speaker 1 I honestly did not anticipate, expect people to... feel like that or think that there was all this stuff that they didn't know they just uh or wanna or want to know more about i was just like moving forward and

BLKNWS Terms and Conditions

a director's mind

Summary provided: