Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a sprawling, expansive work that functions simultaneously as familial remembrance, a documentary on Black intellectualism in the 20th and 21st centuries, and an experimental essay on new media forms. Joseph uses W.E.B. DuBois’ posthumously completed Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and the African-American Experience as a kind of structuring document (it was completed in 1999, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, with Wole Soyinka). Joseph is also referencing and expanding upon on his own 2019 art installation of the same name, adding myriad new footage and research to an already dense project. As InRO contributor Michael Sicinski writes, “the film, like the encyclopedia itself, means to offer counterbalance to thousands of years of Eurocentric knowledge, and this means it touches on figures both marginal and central to global Black culture.” It’s an unabashedly polemical, even didactic, project, but also playful in form. It’s immense, in other words, a thrillingly unpredictable work that demands attention even as some ideas and connections remain tantalizingly opaque.
The film begins with a brief remembrance of Joseph’s late brother, Noah Davis, an artist in Los Angeles who helped spearhead a project called The Underground Museum. Joseph conveys information and memories not through voiceover, but via onscreen text, a technique he continues once he introduces the conceptual form of the Africana Encyclopedia. Images are presented with academic text identifying names, dates, and places. It’s a long list of luminaries presented herein (most of whom this critic admittedly had to look up after viewing), but Joseph also makes sure to pay respect to Jean-Luc Godard, Arthur Jaffa, and Julie Dash, each bold formalists and firebrand political artists who cinephiles might be more familiar with.
Interspersed between the archival footage, scenes of lectures, and some fictional material are clips of the satirical BLKNWS program itself, a kind of play on a network news program (Joseph himself has referenced YO! MTV Raps as an influence). Clips from advertisements and other commercial projects are stamped with a BLKNWS logo, while the “anchors” report on international news involving philosophical concerns and historical perspectives. There’s also a running narrative thread, as Joseph occasionally cuts away to a sleek, futuristic ocean liner called The Nautica where actors Shaunette Renee Wilson and Kaneza Schaal discuss a nautical art exhibit. As Sicinski notes, the trajectory of the ship follows the path of the slave trade, but in reverse. It’s also a nod of sorts to Godard’s Film Socialisme, where a luxury ocean liner becomes a microcosm of contemporary socio-political life.
Marcus Garvey’s writing becomes a recurring point of reference here, and the film frequently turns to segments on art curator and Ghanian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who hides his identify by wearing hats with a curtain of beads that hang down and obscure his face. He’s a fascinating figure and, like many aspects of BLKNWS, could likely support a more traditional documentary film all on his own. Indeed, the main criticisms against BLKNWS are in fact baked into its very premise, morphing into features rather than bugs. It’s a flurry of information and ideas that take on the feel of flipping through a particularly dense academic text, and if it holds the potential to overwhelm many a viewer, it also invites return visits. One could imagine coming back to the film over and over and always picking up on and learning something new. Simply put, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a remarkable document.
DIRECTOR: Kahlil Joseph; CAST: Shaunette Renée Wilson, Zora Casebere, Penny Johnson, Bria Samoné Henderson; DISTRIBUTOR: Rich Spirit; IN THEATERS: November 28; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 53 min.
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