THE NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
January 20, 2022 - January 26, 2022 • 15
Arts & Entertainment Film/TV pg 15 | Books pg 16 | Theater pg 17 | Jazz pg 21
Pg. 18 Your Stars
Five anticipated Black films of Sundance 2022
Still from Anisia Uzeyman and Saul William’s film “Neptune Frost” (Photo courtesy of Sundance Film Festival)
By JORDANNAH ELIZABETH Special to the AmNews We’ve arrived and survived another new year. Since the 1980s, the month of January hosts the much anticipated Sundance Film Festival, and in 2022, the festival has made the decision to create another fully virtual experience after the news and staggering numbers of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Nonetheless, all is not lost. Sundance attendees will be able to experience a myriad of new films with the hopes of being distributed and streamed by major companies like Lionsgate, Hulu and Netflix. We sincerely wish all of the filmmakers and creators the best and we particularly hope that the Black films being featured are offered the opportunities of being shared with the world. Here are five Black films we’re very excited about for the Sundance Film Festival 2022. “Emergency,” Carey Williams The talented young Black filmmaker Carey Williams returns to Sundance with his new film, “Emergency,” a full-length version of a short film by the same name. The 2018 Special Jury Award winner offers a dark comedy about racial dynamics in education and Black police engagement. Plot: Straight-A college student Kunle and his laid-back best friend, Sean, are about to have the most epic night
“Alice,” Krystin Ver Linden “Alice” is a Black star-studded film traversing the world of Black liberation. Keke Palmer and Common break the mold with an interesting film about enslavement and the powerful constructs and misinformation that has kept a Black woman in captivity until the 1970s. Plot: Alice spends her days enslaved on a rural Georgia plantation restlessly yearning for freedom. After a violent clash with plantation owner Paul (Jonny Lee Miller), Alice flees through “Neptune Frost,” Anisia Uzeyman the neighboring woods and stumbles and Saul Williams onto the unfamiliar sight of a highway, Saul Williams along with his wife soon discovering that the year is actuand creative partner Anisia Uzeyman ally 1973. Rescued on the roadside by create an imaginative, otherworldly a disillusioned Black activist named film about technology in the African di- Frank, Alice uncovers the lies that have aspora. This fantasy film is the product kept her enslaved and the promise of of many years of Williams’ work crafting Black liberation. this story in many different formations as it first emerged as a music project “Aftershock,” Paula Eiselt and Tonya called MartyrLoserKing. Lewis Lee Plot: A cinematic vision born out of Filmmakers Tonya Lewis Lee (Spike a war that forces its citizenry to inhab- Lee’s wife) and Paula Eislet explore it other dimensions, “Neptune Frost,” the trauma and activism of reproducwhich debuted to critical acclaim at the tive rights in this powerful documenCannes Film Festival, is a film that be- tary, “Aftershock.” This film shares a comes richer with every rewatch, and penetrating story of Black life and loss is destined to occupy the upper eche- as they follow the growth and activlons of the Afrofuturism canon. “Nep- ism of grieving two grieving husbands tune Frost” hacks the conventions of and fathers. moviemaking to give us this musical Synopsis: An alarmingly disproporscience fiction hybrid set in Rwanda tionate number of Black women are about a transcending connection be- failed every year by the tween an intersex runaway, Neptune, U.S. maternal health system. Shamoand a grieving coltan miner. ny Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were of their lives. Determined to be the first Black students to complete their school’s frat party legendary tour, the friends strap in for their ultimate assignment, Solo cups in hand. But a quick pit stop at home alters their plans when they find a white girl passed out on the living room floor. Faced with the risks of calling the police under lifethreatening optics, Kunle, Sean, and their Latino roommate, Carlos, must find a way to de-escalate the situation before it’s too late.
vibrant, excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Now, their partners and families are determined to sound a rallying cry around this chilling yet largely ignored crisis. Directors Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee follow Gibson’s and Isaac’s bereaved partners, Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, as they fight for justice and build communities of support, bonding especially with other surviving Black fathers.
“jeen-yuhs: A Kanye trilogy,” Clarence “Coodie” Simmons & Chike Ozah A new film exploring the very early years of Kanye West via a 1998 interview West did with access television hose Coodie. This documentary gives insight into the rise of West and the elements that took him to international stardom. Synopsis: One fateful night at Jermaine Dupri’s birthday party in 1998, Coodie, a Chicago public access TV host, first interviewed 21-year-old upand-coming hip hop producer Kanye West. Inspired by the film “Hoop Dreams,” Coodie started to document West’s life to see how far his dreams would take him. When West moved to New York City to land a record deal, Coodie followed with camera in hand. He recorded West for years, from the hustle of his budding producer days through his rise to global icon. This epic three-film documentary features hours of fly-on-the-wall footage and paints a sweeping portrait of one of pop culture’s most controversial figures.
