November 16, 2025 / Gene Siskel Film Center (Black Harvest Film Festival) / Chicago, IL
What began as an iterative installation that appeared in locales ranging from barbershops to museums, BLKNWS (2025) by Kahlil Joseph has been reincarnated in the form of a feature-length film. Labyrinthine in its composition, the opening title cards invite audiences to “release expectations of plot and structure.” As the Encyclopedia Africana opens out onto Joseph’s personal and familial history, which opens out onto historical figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, which opens out onto the fictional proposition of the Trans-Atlantic Biennale, all of which are inter-spliced with a reservoir of material culled from the internet, the resulting film rouses, mystifies, and follows audiences far after, outside, and beyond the theater.
Dazzling in its referential generosity and conceptual ingenuity, BLKNWS slices through convention to pose questions like “do you remember the future?” As is the case for Nkisi Nkondi power figures, the fortitude of the film lives beneath its skin. In the place of herbs and charms, the innards of BLKNWS are densely packed with unfettered Black imagination, which shine — like the medicinal and protective contents of traditional power figures — positions the film as a sentinel that can stand for, safeguard and sanctify the encrypted, tentacular, and endlessly inventive nature of Black being.
Featuring: Demetrius Antonio Lewis, Denny Mwaura, Angelica Jade Bastién, AE Stevenson, Ireon Roach, David Jones, Tyra Patterson, Youssef Boucetta, Claire Flemming
What began as an iterative installation that appeared in locales ranging from barbershops to museums, BLKNWS (2025) by Kahlil Joseph has been reincarnated in the form of a feature-length film. Labyrinthine in its composition, the opening title cards invite audiences to “release expectations of plot and structure.” As the Encyclopedia Africana opens out onto Joseph’s personal and familial history, which opens out onto historical figures like W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, which opens out onto the fictional proposition of the Trans-Atlantic Biennale, all of which are inter-spliced with a reservoir of material culled from the internet, the resulting film rouses, mystifies, and follows audiences far after, outside, and beyond the theater.
Dazzling in its referential generosity and conceptual ingenuity, BLKNWS slices through convention to pose questions like “do you remember the future?” As is the case for Nkisi Nkondi power figures, the fortitude of the film lives beneath its skin. In the place of herbs and charms, the innards of BLKNWS are densely packed with unfettered Black imagination, which shine — like the medicinal and protective contents of traditional power figures — positions the film as a sentinel that can stand for, safeguard and sanctify the encrypted, tentacular, and endlessly inventive nature of Black being.
Featuring: Demetrius Antonio Lewis, Denny Mwaura, Angelica Jade Bastién, AE Stevenson, Ireon Roach, David Jones, Tyra Patterson, Youssef Boucetta, Claire Flemming