‘BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’: Sundance Review

Dir: Kahlil Joseph. US. 2024. 113mins 

A dense and kaleidoscopic film that draws from, amongst other sources, ’Africana: The Encyclopedia Of The African And African-American Experience’, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions centres the Black experience in invigorating ways, exploding constructs like time and history. Director Kahlil Joseph expands his acclaimed video art installation into this feature debut, mixing social media memes, personal history and a wide range of movie clips and fiction segments to create a hypnotic, thought-provoking tapestry. Sometimes overwhelming but always penetrating, the film practically demands multiple viewings to absorb its rich collection of ideas, images and music.

Alive to endless possibilities

This director’s cut of BLKNWS plays Sundance’s NEXT strand, and should travel the festival circuit extensively, rights allowing. Joseph’s reputation as a celebrated music video director for artists like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar should help raise the film’s profile, although it remains a challenging, intellectually provocative piece that is not an easy commercial sell. Audiences looking for a bold mixed-media film will form a line.

The film opens on a close-up of ’Africana’, the ambitious 1999 encyclopaedia inspired by the late scholar W.E.B. Du Bois’ desire to write what he called “the equivalent of a Black ’Encyclopaedia Britannica’.” Joseph initially uses that anthology as a springboard to discuss his family through subtitles that appear at the bottom of the screen. Soon, though, the narrative splinters in myriad fascinating directions, including one strand that focuses on an older Du Bois (Peter Jay Fernandez) assessing his legacy. Another involves Sarah (Shaunette Renee Wilson), a journalist aboard the ship The Nautica covering the Transatlantic Biennale. 

Wielding elements of the essay film, BLKNWS incorporates speeches from prominent Black thinkers, such as art critic and curator Okwui Enwezor, in its extensive overview of Black representation in the media and society. In keeping with the film’s electronica-fuelled soundtrack — which includes Klein’s riveting score and songs from, among others, Aphex Twin and Flying Lotus — the freeform narrative bounces and glides from one strand to the next. One moment, Joseph shows us an ancient African sculpture that looks suspiciously like the golden Oscar statuette, the next, we see an alternate reality in which the British Monarchy is ending.

BLKNWS has its playful elements, but more often the tone is cerebral, combative or philosophical. Even the choice of film clips runs the gamut, including everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey to recent acclaimed nonfiction works from Black directors such as Ja’tovia Gary (The Giverny Document) and Garrett Bradley (Time), almost like catchy samples in a hip-hop track.

Africana provides a semblance of a throughline as Joseph references different entries — Rastafarianism, techno, Phylicia Rashad — that suggest the vitality and permanence of Black culture in so-called mainstream society. As if to prove his point, Joseph has collaborated with several rising Black creatives, including All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt filmmaker Raven Jackson, who are listed as ’featured artists’ contributing to BLKNWS’ mosaic. In addition, cinematographer Bradford Young gives the fiction segments a moody, tactile beauty.

Performances add to the picture’s overall texture, with Wilson a highlight as an undercover journalist trying to blend in with the boat’s cast of characters. But BLKNWS’ real star is Joseph himself, who furiously churns though topics such as colonisation and slavery, sometimes finding a personal angle that never feels self-indulgent. Divided into chapters — or, more accurately, tracks on an album — BLKNWS can sometimes come across as unwieldy, the connections between episodes occasionally feeling haphazard. The riveting side effect to that approach is the audience’s energised curiosity about where the film will go next. Maybe we’ll see a segment from the titular Black-centric news program. Maybe there will be a celebration of controversial activist Marcus Garvey — complete with a title card mentioning that former President Barack Obama could have pardoned Garvey but refused. BLKNWS seems alive to endless possibilities.