‘Restless City,’ Urban Ode & Visual Stunner, Snaps Awards at Addis Fest

By Robin Riskin

‘Restless City’ (2011), directed by Andrew Dosunmu, is a visual delight set on the streets of New York City, told through the eyes of a West African immigrant named Djibril (Sy Alassane). The film just snapped up Best Feature (Best Director) and Best Cinematography at the Colours of the Nile International Film Festival in Addis Ababa.

‘Restless City’ is the first feature film by Andrew Dosunmu, whose background lies in fashion photography and music video directing. (restlesscityfilm.com)

An aspiring rapper from Senegal, Djibril sells CDs on Canal Street, traverses the town via red motobike, and returns home to a dusty apartment in Harlem. His daily hustle takes a perilous turn when he encounters the beautiful Trini (Sky Grey) at the brothel of his bootleg CD supplier. Fast days and pulsing nights blur into a smoky haze against bustling sidewalks, dark clubs, and hair salons.

‘Restless City’ snapped up Best Feature (Best Director) and Best Cinematography at the Colours of the Nile Film Festival in Addis Ababa Nov. 7 – 11. (restlesscityfilm.com)

Through a light plot and sparse dialogue emerges a story that explores the consequences of displacement and results of a dream deferred. While the hasty script was written in two weeks (screenwriter Eugene Gussenhoven) and the footage shot in another two, the images and emotions are astounding. Freeze any given instant, and the still could be a photograph ripped from a fashion magazine or hung in an art gallery.

Think Samuel Fosso’s funky studio portraits, Yinka Shonibare’s politically charged Dutch wax print installations, and Chimanada Ngozi Adichie’s transgressive narratives of West Africans in urban America, mix them in a blender, and put it to film. What with the prowess of cinematographer Bradford Young (who also shot the critically acclaimed ‘Pariah’) and Dosunmu’s background in fashion photography and music video directing, ‘Restless City’ is a visual stunner.

The film takes us through bustling Manhattan streets to smoky Harlem clubs and brothels. (restlesscityfilm.com)

Behind a guise of chic Afropolitan aesthetics, Djibril is confined to a space where he is surrounded by other West African immigrants and isolated from interaction with White American society. While in one sense, Dosunmu loses an opportunity to explore a young Senegalese man’s negotiations of urban America, in another, he purposely defies what has in many ways become a burden for ‘African’ filmmakers creating stories about ‘Africans’ in the diaspora. He shows Djibril acting within his own community instead of marginalized as an ‘other.’

Dosunmu says that ‘Restless City’ is his letter of advice to young immigrants, and his discourse with governments in Africa. “Why are we letting these people go?” he said in the Q&A at the Colours of the Nile Film Festival. “Two hundred years ago, it was by force. Now, it’s our own will.”

‘The Triptych’ Trips Out Brooklyn

Originally written for ACCRA [dot] ALT Radio

By Robin Riskin

SANFORD BIGGERS: I am actually a Japanese artist wearing the mask of a Black man manufactured by a White person to look like your idea of a rapper.

The Brooklyn Museum was buzzing on Thursday night, May 24. Creatives from all over New York City were decked out in their flyest Afro-prints and chunky glasses, gathered for the screening of The Triptych, the latest documentary film series by Terence Nance, presented by Afro-Punk Pictures and the Weeksville Heritage Center.

WANGECHI MUTU: The Kikuyu religion that spoke to me was overtaken by Christianity. You had to be Christian in order to be a part of modernity.

The Triptych highlights the work of artists Sanford Biggers, Wangechi Mutu, and Barron Claiborne. The twenty-minute assemblages of interviews, artworks, photographs, text, and abstraction blur the line between life and art, reality and representation. The three profiles, works of art in themselves, are clever, challenging, and laugh-out-loud funny.

BARRON CLAIBORNE: I know how people see me and I know I’m nothing like it. Blackness is an illusion.

BARRON CLAIBORNE: “Person” comes from “persona” which means mask… I’m not really at war with anything. I don’t really care. I just want to do what I want.

BIGGERS: Black black black quack post-black. The way blackness is scrutinized on a daily basis, it fucks your head up. It’s not about the mask, but what’s behind it. The duality ingrained in society and the various avatars within yourself.

The conversations invite us to explore the experiences and observations behind Biggers’s subversive performance and installation pieces, Mutu’s mythical collage creatures, and Claiborne’s beautiful and wry photographs. The shorts are the first in what promises to be a vibrant and significant series.

WANGECHI MUTU: My creations are mythical, magical, beyond human.

BIGGERS: As an artist, I find history like a sculptural material – malleable – the meanings reassembled to make new features.

Nance, Director, and Claiborne, Co-Director, conceived the project together and expanded to include Mutu and Biggers. With Shawn Peters as Director of Photography, they will continue to chronicle the work, lives, and practices of some of the freshest visual artists today.

TERENCE NANCE: When you need something done, you often look to hire people, but you forget that your friends are capable, creative people, and often make the best team.

Nance and Peters have collaborated on a number film and music video projects in the past, including the short Native Sun (2011), a 20-minute audio-visual treat shot in Ghana with Ghanaian hip hop artist Blitz the Ambassador. The two also directed the recent Sundance premiere, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. The Triptych offers a bit more narrative than these abstract delights, but is equally wacky, magical, and visually delicious.

NANCE, BIGGERS, MUTU + CLAIBORNE CHOP SHOP

After ‘The Triptych’ films closed, the wit and humor continued through a Q&A led by journalist and writer Esther Armah. The group of four friends could not stop laughing, even while engaging complex racial and socio-historical theory. They touched upon commonalities in the way they embrace grayness and reject binaries of black and white. They addressed the strong family influences that have pushed them in their work, and the challenges they still face in the art market despite their success.

BARRON CLAIBORNE: People used to think I was an old white man. Then when they saw who I was, they started giving me particular assignments. You see, as a Black person, you are not seen as a universal human being.

Claiborne said that while artists like Damien Hirst have mastered how to monetize their work, many of those who have been labeled as ‘Black artists’ are still figuring it out. As the audience geared up for applause, Claiborne winked, “Now everyone should pay me $100 on their way out, meet you in the lobby.”

FILMMAKER SAM KESSIE x RAHIEM OF GRANDMASTER FLASH

As if the three gorgeous films and a brilliant Q&A were not enough, the after-party did not disappoint. The artists and filmmakers stuck around to chat with audience-members, while Eclectic Method projected rap video remixes against the glass entrance. Claiborne kept his camera going the whole night, making live art portraits in front of his signature bright print screen.

CLAIBORNE CAPTURES YASIIN BEY aka THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS MOS DEF

Celebrity spottings included Mos Def a.k.a. Yasiin Bey, Rahiem of Grandmaster Flash, British Ghanaian filmmaker Sam Kessie, and Rwandan electropop singer Iyadede a.k.a. “that girl from Africa.”

IYADEDE, SAM KESSIE + ROBIN RISKIN POSE UP

Good thing Brooklyn’s finest photographers were out to capture the fabulous evening. It was one dope night of art, film, and music…and should be just the first of many.