Arts & Entertainment

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.

AmNews: Anisa, tell me about your origins in this project.

Anisia Uzeyman: I would say it originated in our Hub, y’know? The project where Saul was doing “MartyrLoserKing,” I was there too. I was around; we were exchanging ideas and exploring how our common stories are different, and seeing how to seem powerless and also complimentary, and how we separate the experience.

Everything: history; gender; politics. And I think the film really came about because we’re looking for a project where we could work together and express all those ideas and connections.

So I would say it came organically. The gestation of it is really what happened between us and the discussions that we had. And then we went on to start writing the musical [stage] play…

AmNews: Is that why the album [“MartyrLoserKing”] is embedded within the film, because it was supposed to be a musical [from] the beginning?

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 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 our histories, in our lives, our stories. And then trying to find a way to work together, from that desire connected to what we were observing in the real world.

AmNews: So it’s 2022—it’s been almost a decade. In relation to all the work you do, tell me how did it feel for you, existentially and emotionally, to get through these [past] eight years of finally getting to this point, which is not the end, but to this pinnacle for sure.

Williams: Well, the one thing that I learned throughout this process—and from the very beginning—was that it was going to involve a great deal of pacing. I was very clear on the fact after spending 20 years on the road, touring and what have you, I was growing less interested in that, and I had some, if you will, childhood dreams that I wanted to manifest, now or never. For me that dream was writing a musical, which is something I wanted to do since I was a teenager, maybe even before I was a teen.

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.

20 • June 23, 2022 - June 29, 2022

THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS

A R T S & E N T E R T A I N M E N T

Orchestra of St. Luke’s premieres Julius Eastman’s ‘Femenine’ for Pride Month

By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH

Special to the AmNews

It has been announced that the interestingly extensive music series “Sounds & Stories” from New York’s St. Luke’s Orchesta, hosted by David Hyde Pierce, will be premiering the incredible work of the Black queer composer Julius Eastman on June 28.

Eastman’s 1974 piece, “Femenine” will be presented June 28 to commemorate Pride Month and the 53rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, which was an uprising that took place in New York City for the protection and rights of the LGTBQ community in New York City. Eastman was known as a powerful genius of minimal compositional music and sound. He died in 1990.

OSL’s press release reads, “A selfdescribed ‘gay guerrilla’ who strove to be ‘Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, [and] a homosexual to the fullest,’ when it came to sexuality and gender, Eastman was far ahead of his time. Already performing in a dress and taking a creative approach to pronouns back in the 1970s, he was, ‘long before words like genderqueer and nonbinary entered common usage, … modeling his own kind of gender fluidity’ (NPR). Such courageous nonconformity exacerbated the prejudice he encountered, and the frustrations and downward spiral that ensued. “Eastman died young and in complete obscurity after battling addiction, homelessness and AIDS. Many of his scores had been impounded during an eviction, and many more have since been lost. Only in recent years, with help from the friends and colleagues who survived him, has the painstaking work of rediscovering and reconstructing his catalogue begun.”

Eastman also became a cornerstone of the very rare widely known composers within the high art and sound art music community all over the world. His style was poignant, quiet, yet beautifully overpowering and this artist has certainly earned the stature and honor of being played to listeners in 2022.

Vogue writes about Eastman, “As the renaissance of Eastman scholarship grows year after year, the overdue celebration confirms not only the value of his contributions as a queer, Black composer, but the power of the music itself to redress decades of public disregard with the sounds of sheer joy, anger, and sensuality.”

OSL will perform the arrangement of “Femenine” by Christopher McIntyre, who has “played a signal role in the much-heralded recent rediscovery … of works by Julius Eastman” (New Yorker).

The piece is scored with violin, viola, bass, percussion, piano, synthesizer, alto saxophone and bassoon; this will feature McIntyre himself on synthesizer alongside the superlative musicians of St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, OSL’s artistic core.

As a special gift to the online community to celebrate this year’s Pride Month and Pride Day, their account of the work will stream at OSLmusic.org, free of charge, from OSL’s DiMenna Center for Classical Music, New York’s leading venue for streaming digital performance space.

For more information visit: www. oslmusic.org/

Composer Julius Eastman (Ron Hammond/New Amsterdam Records)

Tribeca Film Fest 2022: It’s a wrap!

By MARGRIRA

Special to the AmNews

I’m sad to report that the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival (in my humble opinion) didn’t live up to my expectations and I hope that it’s a direct result of the impact of COVID-19 because that opens up hope for 2023.

That being said, the gems stood out in a sea of mediocrity and there was a handful of interesting films in the documentary section including Jennifer Lopez’s “Halftime” which opened the festival (currently streaming on Netflix), and the doc short “Nicholas Brothers: Stormy Weather” and the very fine “A Story of Bones.”

“A Story of Bones” explores the life of Annina Van Neel, the chief environmental officer for Saint Helena, and the troubled £285m ($360m) airport project. When she learns of the island’s most terrible atrocity—an unmarked mass burial ground of an estimated 9,000 formerly enslaved Africans in Rupert’s Valley—it opens the floodgates of research.

The reality of this disturbing find is essentially one of the most significant traces of the trans-Atlantic slave trade still on earth. The sad truth of this find is the haunting fact there are more (unknown) injustices. Now Annina fights alongside renowned African American preservationist Peggy King Jorde and a group of disenfranchised islanders—many of them descendants of the formerly enslaved—for the proper memorialisation of these forgotten victims. The resistance they face exposes disturbing truths about the U.K.’s colonial past and present.

The festival ended with Josh Alexander’s doc “Loudmouth” which follows the winding road that is Al Sharpton’s life story as an iconic activist and spiritual leader. Scenes with Andrew Cuomo and other influential figures highlight what makes Sharpton so special as a storyteller and agitator. After the premiere screening, there was a conversation with the Rev. Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, and John Legend which Cori Murray moderated.

What impressed me was Indeed’s Rising Voices and their partnership with Lena Waithe and Hillman Grad Productions where they created a program that was specifically designed to cover, invest in, and share stories created by BIPOC filmmakers. In their second year, they are able to share that over 1,000 jobs have been created through the program since its inception.

The 2022 Rising Voices presented 10 short films chosen amongst thousands of entries, but the ones that caught my eye were Cara Lawson’s “Crooked Trees Gon Give Me Wings,” Shanrica Evan’s “Amina” and Justin Floyd’s “Malleable.” But the one that shook me to the core was Tara Motamedi’s “Before Dawn, Kabul Time” which tosses us into Afghanistan after the wake of the U.S. announcing their withdrawal leaving all foreign personnel and many Afghans trying to flee the country before the full takeover of the Taliban. Sadly, it’s inspired by true events.

There is something unique about Tara Motamedi’s work that I can’t put my finger on but I believe she’s going to rise above the competition as her career grows. Motamedi is a first-generation American raised in a liberal Kurdish/Azeri household and speaks three languages. She earned a BA in Film Production and an MFA in Screenwriting from Brooks Institute. Her feature screenplay “Under an Olive Tree” influenced by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was honored by the WGA’s Inclusion and Equity department in 2018 and became a semi-finalist at the Academy Nicholl Fellowship in 2019.

Here are the Audience Award Winners for Tribeca Festival 2022, presented by OKX. These films were decided by the audiences voting for their picks online and in person, including three categories—Best Documentary Feature, Best Narrative Feature, and Best Online Premiere.

“A Story of Bones” (Courtesy photo) Director Spike Lee with the Rev. Al Sharpton at the “Loudmouth” premiere (Courtesy photo)

Marie Cissé’s (Babetida Sadjo) troubled past comes calling with the arrival of Father Patrick (Souléymane Sy Savané), an African priest whom she recognizes from a terrifying episode in her homeland.

Audience Award - Documentary

“The Cave of Adullam” directed by Laura Checkoway

A heartwarming look at Detroit martial arts teacher Jason Wilson, who mentors young AfricanAmerican boys, giving them the rare and invaluable experience of being seen and cared for as the vulnerable beings they are.

Second Place: “Lift” directed by David Peterson. A look at New York Theatre Ballet’s Project LIFT which offers scholarships to homeless, home insecure, and atrisk children, exposing them to the beauty and discipline of ballet, often for the first time while helping them develop the talent they never knew they had.

Audience Award - Online

“Cherry” directed by Sophia Galibert. A story about a driftless and uncommitted 25-year-old in Los Angeles who discovers she has only 24 hours to make one of the most consequential decisions of her life, what to do about an unplanned pregnancy.

By MARGRIRA

Special to the AmNews

Actor Ethan Hawke has finally stepped into his first role as an evil character. It’s taken 30 odd years to get to that darkest of places and in “The Black Phone” he plays a serial killer that’s memorable, and his mask is disturbing and curious.

His character is referred to as the Grabber, who kidnaps teenage boys and then does unspeakable things to them. Cruising around in a black, ’70s van with the word Abracadabra written on the side of it. Abracadabra is an Aramaic phrase ‘avra kehdabra,’ meaning “I will create as I speak” and when he jumps out of the vehicle to snatch his victims off the street, he wears a magician’s hat or carries black balloons.

Inside his home, we understand the full horror attached to the grand mask, which has removable sections appearing to be chiseled in stone. The mask seems to have moods, sometimes offering a leering smile, other times a frown, and sometimes he chooses to wear only the lower half of it.

The movie is set in 1978, in North Denver where we meet Finney (Mason Thames), the cute 13-year-old hero who loves playing with his Little League team.

Finney and his spunky little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), discuss who’s the most popular on the television series “Happy Days” all in all, sharing with us their innocent life inside a safe community.

But in reality, there have been five teenagers, all boys, yanked off the streets by the Grabber. We realize soon that Finney’s days are numbered and soon he’s thrown into the Grabber’s dungeon which is a concrete, soundproof bunker which only has a dirty mattress. His only vista is of the corroded walls that are marked with rusty, horizontal cracks that remind the viewer of wounds.

The meat of the film is about Finney’s attempt to escape. He develops a kind of relationship with the Grabber who gives him food and hints at the terrible things to come.

Meanwhile, Gwen has a dream that gives important details about the killer, highlighting the fact that he keeps his black balloons inside his van. Directed by Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange”) he pushes into the adapted short story (written by Joe Hill) to give the audience a serial-killer flick that almost feels like a comic-book world but with some supernatural touches which drive the story.

In “The Black Phone,” the Grabber isn’t atypical of what we expect from evil characters. That being said, Hawke works with what he has used that creepy mask to his advantage.

In the bunker, there is an old, black rotary telephone that hangs on the wall. Despite being told that the phone doesn’t work, Finney hears it ringing, and each time he answers it, the voice on the other end is…no spoiler alerts but it’s an interesting twist.

Finney picks up quickly, gathering clues about the Grabber, building his case and finding the weak points of the bunker’s infrastructure. Suddenly, this kid realizes that he can and should fight back.

“The Black Phone” is a horror ride, suspenseful and just creepy enough to hold your attention.

“The Black Phone” is in theaters on June 24, 2022.

“The Black Phone” (Universal Pictures)

‘First Kill’—African American monster hunters, now on Netflix

By MARGRIRA

Special to the AmNews

In the new series “First Kill” a generation of African American monster killers do their thing— hunt down and kill monsters.

Based on the short story by V. E. Schwab (who also wrote the first episode and produces the series) it’s super fun to watch folks of color beating up vampires, ghouls, and werewolves. But like all good dramas, there is an obstacle and for this one, it’s love.

Our young vampire hunter Calliope (Imani Lewis) falls in love with a young vampire, Juliette (Sarah Catherine Hook) and naturally this young love is caught between their family duties and their growing feelings.

Currently streaming, there are eight episodes following the drama of Juliette and Calliope (aka “Cal”) who struggle with balancing their duties which include the prickly world of high school.

Juliette’s parents Sebastian (Will Swenson) and Margot (Elizabeth Mitchell, somehow), and Cal’s

“First Kill” (Brian Douglas photo) inforce that the two girls can not be together.

I don’t think this series set itself up for “serious writing” which (in my opinion) would weigh down the quick fun of the absurd situation. But what I will highlight is that the series doesn’t convince me that there is a real romance. I don’t feel or see the chemistry and that’s just an issue of casting. Everyone is good. That’s not what I am griping about. I’m suggesting that there’s no chemistry, and since the meat of the series is about keeping these two star-crossed lovers apart, something is missing.

But, the series is fun because watching our people destroy evil monsters has another layer of satisfaction that does not need more explanation. The folks that know, know.

Sure “First Kill” is packed to the brim with clichés but that’s what makes it fun. Don’t take it seriously; lean into the images of Blackhued skin being the victor, the heroes, the monster slayers, and have fun!

“First Kill” is now streaming on Netflix.