An exploration – from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Grace Jones – of how black artists use the sci-fi genre to examine black history and imagine new, alternative futures.
Himself
An exploration – from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Grace Jones – of how black artists use the sci-fi genre to examine black history and imagine new, alternative futures.
2021-05-23
6
In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
Fresh out of university, a Turkish young man with literary aspirations returns to his home village, and to his father, a debt-ridden man with a gambling problem.
Dr. Vogler's, a nineteenth-century traveling mesmerist and peddler of potions, magic is put to the test in Stockholm by the cruel, eminently rational royal medical adviser Dr. Vergérus.
Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.
"Maine-Ocean" is the name of a train that rides from Paris to Saint-Nazaire (near the ocean). In that train, Dejanira, a Brazilian, has a brush with the two ticket inspectors. Mimi, another traveler and also a lawyer, helps her. The four of them will meet together later and live a few shifted adventures with a strange-speaking sailor (Mimi's client).
The misadventures of Attila and his band of barbarians as they take up arms against the Roman Empire in their native Milano
A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
Ana and Helen, two divorced women, were close friends as teenagers. Today, amidst the corona virus pandemic and in quarantine, they get in touch after 20 years via internet. Through video conference calls, memories, sensations and emotions reflourishes.
‘Finding Fanon’ is the first part in a series of works by artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy; inspired by the lost plays of Frantz Fanon, (1925-1961) a politically radical humanist whose practice dealt with the psychopathology of colonisation and the social and cultural consequences of decolonisation. In the film, the two artists negotiate Fanon’s ideas, examining the politics of race, racism and the post-colonial, and how these societal issues affect their relationship. Their conflict is played out through a script that melds found texts and personal testimony, transposing their drama to a junkyard houseboat at an unspecified time in the future. Navigating the past, present and future, Achiampong and Blandy question the promise of globalisation, recognising its impact on their own heritage.
A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores and takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.
Back from a professional trip to Paris, a neurologist at the pinnacle of his career has to pick up his wife so that they can attend a family meal to commemorate his father, who died a year before. At his mother's flat, the guests are waiting for the priest to arrive while arguing about all kinds of things connected and unconnected with the world’s events and wars.
A man in his fifties reminisces about his childhood growing up in a Welsh mining village at the turn of the 20th century.
A young man travels to an isolated farm for his lover's funeral where he's quickly drawn into a twisted, sexually charged game by his lover's aggressive brother.
"Popeye" Doyle travels to Marseilles to find Alain Charnier, the drug smuggler that eluded him in New York.
Based on the long running play by Jang Jin, the story is set in Korea during the Korean War in 1950. Soldiers from both the North and South, as well as an American pilot, find themselves in a secluded and naively idealistic village, its residents unaware of the outside world, including the war.
A funny and moving story of family and free love set in a freewheeling 1970s commune. When Anna and Erik inherit a huge house, they gather a motley crew of cohabitants to reinvigorate their lives, forcing them to reconcile their new values with old habits.
Nathalie teaches philosophy at a high school in Paris. She is passionate about her job and particularly enjoys passing on the pleasure of thinking. Married with two children, she divides her time between her family, former students and her very possessive mother. One day, Nathalie’s husband announces he is leaving her for another woman. With freedom thrust upon her, Nathalie must reinvent her life.
Three women in a maternity ward reveal their lives and intimate thoughts to each other.
During the last winter of the Civil War, cavalry officer Amos Dundee leads a contentious troop of Army regulars, Confederate prisoners and scouts on an expedition into Mexico to destroy a band of Apaches who have been raiding U.S. bases in Texas.
After teenage ambulance driver Ernest Hemingway takes shrapnel in the leg during World War I, he falls in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, a beautiful older nurse at the hospital where he's sent to recover. Their affair slowly blossoms, until Hemingway boldly asks Agnes to be his wife and journey to America with him.
Robert Mugge filmed jazz great Sun Ra on location in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. between 1978 and 1980. The resulting 60-minute film includes multiple public and private performances, poetry readings, a band rehearsal, interviews, and extensive improvisations. Transferred to HD from the original 16mm film and lovingly restored for the best possible viewing experience.
A documentary on funk and P-funk and the bands and artists that made it all happen: James Brown, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Maurice White and his Earth Wind & Fire, Average White Band, Kool & The Gang and lots more. It tells the story of black American music and how it evolved from funk to more main stream to disco to hiphop to contemporary R 'n B and its impact on society. Music and live footage from the bands, interviews with artists and band members of Kool & The Gang, Earth Wind & Fire, George Clinton and lots more.
A short documentary that emerge at the center of round table debate, participating in it there's three students from the Superior School of Arts and Design, Caldas da Rainha - Portugal. This conversation go along with a video essay about Afrofuturism and Pop Culture. Also, during the debate, an interview with another student gives some real example of how afrofuturism can be applied when it comes to in taking control of the colonial narratives into a black person perspective.
Sun Ra and his Solar Myth Arkestra return to Earth after several years in space. Ra proclaims himself "the alter-destiny", meets with inner-city youths and battles with the devil himself to save the black race.
This 3D animated short film in the Afrofuturist genre explores the topics of AI and bias. In a distant future, an artificial intelligence named Aero is inaugurated as the world's first AI ruler. But Aero soon learns that important worldviews are missing from her databank, including the experiences of the historically marginalized and oppressed.
In the hilltops of Burundi, a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region's natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry.
"Outside the Aquarium" is the new exhibition of protagonist Jonas. In his paintings he portrays his experiences as a black immigrant and part of the LGBT Community expressing his fears, loneliness and dreams for the future.
An 'afronaut' emerges from the wreckage of a spaceship in the volcanic crater of Mount Nyiragongo. As he descends into the city below, encountering the people of present-day Goma, he begins to understand what he must do to change the future for his people.
When culture vultures apply for citizenship on a new planet colonized by Black people, three judges must decide how to deal with folks who want everything but the burden.
Harlem Fragments is an Afro-futurist scrapbook storytelling of a Harlem Black family's beautiful destruction during the 2008 recession. A natural disaster so mesmerizing you can't look away from the tragedy. Based on true events- The film explores the haunting societal pressures of achieving the Black American dream, told in the POV of 10 year old TJ revisiting his family's home that's up for sale. By empowering this Black boy in this film with the agency to imagine, TJ, through his own journey, finds a way to process and come to terms with his family's divorce. It's important for every Black child out there enduring the same foreign emotions to know that it's okay to feel them, and affirm that there is a future trajectory forward out of the initial destruction.
An alien couple named Addem and Efa live on Earth as human beings in order to determine if it has proper living conditions for their race. They are suddenly called back to their mothership and must face a disgruntled Special Agent and growing, uncontrollable human urges to stay on Earth before it's too late to return.
A collectively made filmic opera in 35 parts. The Black and predominantly queer art collective, an evolving line up of poets and artists from across the world, abstracts and reimagines opera in any traditional conception. Set to hip-hop, blues, noise, R&B and electronica, the piece uses the voice (chanting, singing, screaming; written by poet and activist Dawn Lundy Martin) as its primary tool, verbalising centuries of alienation, vulnerability and protest in the global African diaspora through its disruptive libretto.
In a dystopian future where people live nocturnally to avoid the harmful rays of the sun, a young black girl unravels the lie that has kept her and her sister in the dark.
After a flying saucer containing all the stories of humanity crashes in his backyard, a young artist seeks help to interpret its messages.
A young Black game designer comes face to face with covert racism after he’s transformed to look like a white man.
A surreal post-apocalyptic drama by Patrick Kennelly inspired by the clipping. album “Splendor & Misery”
A young black man wakes up chained in a dark room and is hypnotized by the static of a TV.
Zari and Aina are a young couple, orbiting each other but struggling to connect. We first see each of them in their own element: Zari painting to finish a piece for a gallery opening, and Aina coding her own video game designed to increase self-awareness. When Aina makes an effort to connect and Zari shuts her out again, Aina is triggered to send her girlfriend into the video game. In the game, Zari meets different versions of herself and her ego's desires. Ultimately, she has to decide what she's willing to let go of in order to advance to the next level. When the game malfunctions, Aina launches her back into reality and they finally confront each other.
The Woman at the End of the World, inspired by the album "A Mulher do Fim do Mundo (2015)" by singer Elza Soares, tells the story of Benedita and the girl Lua, two black women who saw the old world succumb and are now the only ones survivors. In this post-apocalyptic scenario, the short film portrays a journey through the search for breaking the silence, thinking about the innumerable processes of silence passed by the characters in the old world. In this sense, the end of the world is also a character, being the personification of a state of mind that permeates the loneliness of the black woman. The short film reveres female power, rescues memories, discusses affection and thinks about paths to be followed.