THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
June 23, 2022 - June 29, 2022 • 19
Arts & Entertainment
Pg. 24
Music pg 20 | Film/TV pg 20, 21 | Jazz pg 22 | Theater pg 25
Your Stars
Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman talk Afrofuturist film ‘Neptune Frost’ “Neptune Frost” (Chris Schwagga photo)
By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH Special to the AmNews
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman have been on a lengthy and fascinating journey in creating their afrofuturist film, “Neptune Frost.” The couple double as producers, with Williams as a writer and Uzeyman as the director of photography. “Neptune Frost” appeared into the Black artistic ethosphere as an album in 2016 and will emerge as a graphic novel which will follow the current successful theatrical releases of the powerful and enigmatic film about a digital, otherworldly being named Neptune Frost. Frost goes on her own journey and blurs the lines between gender, humanity, computer science and self healing. Williams and Uzeyman spoke to the AmNews about the film. “Neptune Frost” can be seen at Magic Johnson AMC in Harlem on June 24. AmNews: It’s Pride Month, so let’s talk a little bit about the Transition: of symbiotic; of rhetoric; of whatever gender, however style (analytical or political) and literal growth and change from a male being into a female digital force of nature. Saul Williams: You’re saying it all! Preach. From its inception, “Neptune Frost” was always a story of this intersex, y’know, character. And the Transformation that occurs in the film was something that we conceived of from the very beginning. We’ve always seen it as a means of discussing this sort of fluidity that is related to the lines between culture, gender, language, technology, history—all of these things. And of course, there’s a certain fluidity in the film overall. But the fluidity of the character Neptune is sort of, y’know, the way in which we thought that we could bring this fairytale to life and talk about this binary coding, which, of course, takes place in the virtual realm but also has its place in
the way that forces have imposed themselves on how we ingest society, how we ingest community. And so we think of the rigidity of that [imposing] and its relationship to colonialism, to griot forces. And understanding, essentially, that fluidity is something that’s always been a part of our culture from before they arrived—and that the rigidity came with the times. I think the role of artists is finding creative ways to shift the discussion—to be a part of the discussion, and to uplift the discussion. The fluidity that we express in the film is something as artists we have clearly, and always, identified with.
play [BAMF Café, formerly situated in the Station North neighborhood in Baltimore]. That album didn’t come out ‘til 2016. And then to the stage play, to producers. And from there we had a producer who said, “I would love to invest in this, but I really think it sits still.” And so, the idea is slowly transformed and we accepted that as a reality and realized that if it were a film then we could be onlocation. Then we could introduce new actors and new voices. Personally, I have no personal relationship to Rwanda or Maundy without Anisia. So the whole impetus of this story came from Anisia and [sic] I meeting, and having a blossoming of discussions: connecting points in AmNews: Anisa, tell me about our histories, in our lives, our stoyour origins in this project. ries. And then trying to find a way to work together, from that desire Anisia Uzeyman: I would say connected to what we were obit originated in our Hub, y’know? serving in the real world. The project where Saul was doing “MartyrLoserKing,” I was there AmNews: So it’s 2022—it’s been too. I was around; we were ex- almost a decade. In relation to all changing ideas and exploring how the work you do, tell me how did our common stories are different, it feel for you, existentially and and seeing how to seem powerless emotionally, to get through these and also complimentary, and how [past] eight years of finally getting we separate the experience. to this point, which is not the end, Everything: history; gender; pol- but to this pinnacle for sure. itics. And I think the film really came about because we’re looking Williams: Well, the one thing for a project where we could work that I learned throughout this together and express all those process—and from the very beideas and connections. ginning—was that it was going So I would say it came organical- to involve a great deal of pacing. ly. The gestation of it is really what I was very clear on the fact after happened between us and the dis- spending 20 years on the road, cussions that we had. And then we touring and what have you, I was went on to start writing the musi- growing less interested in that, cal [stage] play… and I had some, if you will, childhood dreams that I wanted to AmNews: Is that why the album manifest, now or never. For me [“MartyrLoserKing”] is embed- that dream was writing a musical, ded within the film, because it was which is something I wanted to supposed to be a musical [from] do since I was a teenager, maybe the beginning? even before I was a teen. Williams: It was always a musical; nothing has changed. When we met we had the idea of exactly what we did. The only difference was it was going to be on stage. [In] 2014 Anisia and I did a residency at BAMF to write the stage
AmNews: Are you exhausted, were you impatient? You’re talking about pacing; that embeds a body of patience. How did you psychologically and emotionally get yourself through eight years? Because that’s still a long time.
Williams: Well, think about it. Normally, if you’re talking about any other musical, you’re going to have one person writing the music; you’re going to have another person writing the script. So I was clear on the fact, from the beginning, that I was taking on more than normally what one person usually does. And the same was true for Anisia as a director of photography, and a director. And producing (we’re both the lead producers) and so much more because we’re the fundraisers for this project. The process of finding the sounds; the process of finding the words, the lyrics; the process of finding the characters, the voices—who’s singing? The process of collaborating…The graphic novel, for example, has had two illustrators. [With] the first illustrator, over the course of two years, I had six drawings. For me, over the course of those two years, I wrote two albums and a book of poetry. We had to—I had to—adjust and acknowledge, OK, we’re not working at the same pace. I have to find someone that works at a better pace. If I was still working with that illustrator I have no idea when this thing would be completed. Whereas right now,
yes, we still beat the graphic novel, but I know that, like, 300, 400 drawings have already been done. For me, I was thinking of this like George Lucas—we’ve created a universe. It’s been all about worldbuilding. The time that it takes to build it is really nothing compared to how long it may last in the hearts and minds and the imaginations of those who experience it now. And so it was worth all the time: it was worth all of the books that we read, all of the tutorials that Anisia put herself through [on YouTube]. [Laughter]; worth all of the discussions; worth all of the films, all of the traveling. All of this stuff—it’s like building a pyramid. When “Martyr…” came out I knew, without telling the public, that I was basically releasing the demos, or reference tracks, that I would be sharing with the cast. That they would then be singing in their own voices and in their own language. But I needed something to live off of and to get me through that time period. So releasing albums and touring off of them was part of the process. www.saulwilliams.com www.instagram.com/saulwilliams www.twitter.com/SaulWilliams
