45 minutes / Color
Release: 1997
Copyright: 1996
John Akomfrah, director of Seven Songs of Malcolm X, returns with an engaging and searing examination of the hitherto unexplored relationships between Pan-African culture, science fiction, intergalactic travel, and rapidly progressing computer technology.
This cinematic essay posits science fiction (with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering) as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness.
Akomfrah's analysis is rooted in an exploration of the cultural works of Pan-African artists, such as funkmaster George Clinton and his Mothership Connection, Sun Ra's use of extraterrestrial iconography, and the very explicit connection drawn between these issues in the writings of black science fiction authors Samuel R. Delaney and Octavia Butler.
Included are interviews with black cultural figures, from musicians DJ Spooky, Goldie, and Derek May, who discuss the importance of George Clinton to their own music, to George Clinton himself. Astronaut Dr. Bernard A. Harris Jr. describes his experiences as one of the first African-Americans in space, while Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols tells of her campaign for a greater role for African-Americans in NASA. Novelist Ismael Reed and cultural critics Greg Tate and Kodwo Eshun tease out the parallels between black life and science fiction, while Delaney and Butler discuss the motivations behind their choice of the genre to express ideas about the black experience.
In keeping with the futuristic tenor of the film, the interviews are intercut with images of Pan-African life from different periods of history, jumping between time and space from the past to the future to the present, not unlike the mode of many rock videos or surfing the Internet.
"A tantalizing blend of sci-fi parable and essay film [and] a fine primer on the aesthetics and dynamics of contemporary Afrofuturism — it was the first film to include the then-recently minted term." —New York Magazine
"The playfulness and intellectual virtuosity of the film transcends its surface gloss, to become a kaleidoscopic celebration of the richness of Pan-African culture." —Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism
"A compelling vision of futurism in black society." —Dallas Observer
"John Akomfrah’s hypnotic semi-fictional documentary about Afrofuturism [gets] inside an artist's head." —The New York Times
"A 45-minute meditation on black consciousness whose dense, almost chaotic weave of images and ideas offers space travel and science fiction as metaphors for the experience of the African diaspora." —Chicago Reader
Select Accolades
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Chris Marker | 2014 | 106 minutes | Color | French | English subtitles
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John Akomfrah | 2011 | 94 minutes | Color | English
An homage to the inspirational African-American civil rights leader.
John Akomfrah | 1995 | 52 minutes | Color
