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Jun 21, 2023 · Megan Hoetger


Interlude: Sourcing Inspiration from (Black) Cinema


In the opening days of their BijlmAIR residency period and amidst the work of synchronizing as co-writers of the Zwarte Ibis script, Black Speaks Back (BSB) collective member Alexine Gabriela shared with the group a slideshow working through four genres of (Black) cinema, including: Afrosurrealism, Magical Realism, Afro-futurisms, and Black romance. Gabriela’s inquiry began from two broad research questions:

Where have I seen intimacy before in cinema?
What are some film movements I think we can take from?
***
Looking to examples from the four film genres, Gabriela’s presentation focused especially on Afrosurrealism for which she offered a working definition, as well as link for a webisode analysis of the serial Atlanta with a short bibliography and numerous examples of associated artist practices (eg. Arthur Jafa or Toni Morrison). Within Afrosurrealism, her interest lay in the genre’s capacities to “play with time” and disclose – as she noted – “the underlying complexities of Black intimacy and the tensions, the distortions of space and time. Think of the legacy of being a people ‘without history’, without a home. While also thinking about the possibilities of the present and future.”

Links for the numerous references that Gabriela culled together are here shared with studio visitors, giving a view inside the kinds of materials that BSB was looking at and feeling with at the start of the scriptwriting process.
***
Afrosurrealism presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it. Like the African Surrealists, Afrosurrealists recognize that nature (including human nature) generates more surreal experiences than any other process could hope to produce.

VIDEO

Why Donald Glover's Atlanta Feels So Weird ›››

VIDEO

Atlanta · Season 2 Ep. 7: Bostrom's Simulation Scene · FX ›››

Citations
  • Baraka, Amiri. Henry Dumas: Afro-Surreal Expressionist Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 22, No. 2, Henry Dumas Issue (Summer, 1988) [Link]
  • Miller, D. Scot. Call It Afro-Surreal. San Francisco Bay Guardian, 19 May 2009 [Link]
  • Mulkerrins, Jane. Donald Glover on the Return of Atlanta: ‘I’m Not Making a TV show, I Am Making an Experience’. The Guardian, Jun 23, 2018 [Link]
  • Bakare, Lanre. From Beyoncé to Sorry to Bother You: The New Age of Afro-Surrealism. The Guardian, Dec 6, 2018 [Link]

Artist references
  • Arthur Jafa (the familiar alien)
  • Beloved
  • Invisible Man
  • Ark of Bones and Other Stories
  • Lost Legacies and Reclaims

More on Surrealism
  • “What is a Surreal Movie?” [Link]
  • “Understanding Surrealism” [Link]
  • Meshes of the Afternoon [Link]
***
  • The Water Will Carry Us Home, a short film by Gabrielle Tesfaye (2018) [Link]
  • Preview of Ghost Island, a visual research project by Lisandro Suriel (2019) [Link]
  • De Kroon, a short film by Robin Ramos & Kymani Ceder (2021) [Link] (more information here)
  • Touch’M, a short film by Giovanni Maisto Ferreira (2021) [Link]
***
  • Trailer for Sun-Ra’s Space is the Place (1974) [Link]
  • Trailer for Black Speaks Back’s EUphoria (2018) [Link]
***
  • Beach scene from the film Moonlight (2016; dir. Barry Jenkins) [Link]
  • Performance of “A Blues for Nina” from the film Love Jones (1997; dir. Theodore Witcher) [Link]
  • Trailer for Lovers Rock (2020, dir. Steve McQueen) [Link]