Événement

Black Mother

Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaicas turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.

"Im struggling to grasp the words to properly describe how I felt after watching Khalik Allahs new film, Black Mother. I want to say this: to experience the latest Allah film is like witnessing the performance of a ritual, a rite of passage for the spectator, a life-changing event, sort of a baptism . . . where youre so deeply submerged in the trance of phantasmagoria that you seem to wake up of a lysergic trip." - Desist Film

"Allahs photographic sensibility is only one element of his exemplary art. He also edited the film, and his complex sense of audiovisual compositiontextural, tonal, thematic, rhythmic, philosophicalis as original and as personal as his cinematography." - Richard Brody, New Yorker

"Allahs eye doesnt shy away from the political aftermath of colonization, nor waiver at the sights and sounds of prostitution, tending to all with the same even gaze. Black Mother is a spiritual project, collapsing the beautiful and the profane." - Frieze

This is filmmaking as baptism; theres almost nothing else like it. K. Austin Collins, Vogue

"Gliding from color to black and white, from digital to analog, from grim realism to spiritual ecstasy, the film offers a song of praise to the island of Jamaica and a reckoning with its painful history and hard-pressed present." A.O. Scott, The New York Times

"Stunning. Transfomative. Black Mother may be the most fearless film Ive seen in a decade." Scout Tafoya, Frameland

"An undeniably transcendental spiritual awakening in audiovisual form." Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times

"The best documentary of the year! A combination of city symphony and verité intimacy Confirms Allah as a dynamic emerging voice in the arena of nonfiction filmmaking. - Slant