Arthur Jafa

Commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art on the occasion of Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces (October 9, 2022-February 18, 2023).

Collage showcased at the Gladstone Gallery in October 2022.

Collage showcased at the Gladstone Gallery in October 2022.

With AGHDRA, Arthur Jafa takes his work in a much different direction. The film contains just a handful of cuts; all of the footage is original. It alludes to some of the concerns Jafa explored in Love Is the Message—the tenuousness of Black life, and the twinned notions of beauty and fear that can accompany it—but this new film does so in relatively oblique ways. Gone is the music video–style pacing of Jafa’s past works. In its place is a slower kind of montage that inspires introspection.

With AGHDRA, Arthur Jafa takes his work in a much different direction. The film contains just a handful of cuts; all of the footage is original. It alludes to some of the concerns Jafa explored in Love Is the Message—the tenuousness of Black life, and the twinned notions of beauty and fear that can accompany it—but this new film does so in relatively oblique ways. Gone is the music video–style pacing of Jafa’s past works. In its place is a slower kind of montage that inspires introspection.

With AGHDRA, Arthur Jafa takes his work in a much different direction. The film contains just a handful of cuts; all of the footage is original. It alludes to some of the concerns Jafa explored in Love Is the Message—the tenuousness of Black life, and the twinned notions of beauty and fear that can accompany it—but this new film does so in relatively oblique ways. Gone is the music video–style pacing of Jafa’s past works. In its place is a slower kind of montage that inspires introspection.

Music Video for Kanye West's 2020 single "Wash Us In The Blood" directed by Arthur Jafa.

If Love Is The Message trained Jafa’s scrutiny on black experience, The White Album shifts his lens to white experience, acknowledging that neither can be understood in isolation from the another. Again, he combines imagery from a wide array of sources, from music videos to confessionals posted to YouTube, to produce a trenchant examination of race relations in the United States.

A montage of filmed sermons and gospel songs performed in black churches from the 1980s to the 2000s.

It's a hot summer day in June, 1969. Marsha throws herself a birthday party and dreams of performing at a club in town, but no one shows up. Sylvia, Marsha’s best friend, distraught from an unsuccessful introduction between her lover and her family, gets so stoned she forgets about the party. Marsha, Sylvia, and friends eventually meet at the Stonewall Inn to celebrate Marsha's birth. When the police arrive to raid the bar, Marsha and Sylvia are among the first to fight back.

Music: Jeff Mills "Medicine Man"

A striking music-driven 8-minute video work proposes a vibrant scenario in which the histories drawn from the African American narrative of Blackness bear universal significance.

Personal pilgrimages to three sites of extreme creativity, invention, and generosity: Alice Coltrane's Ashram, Watts Towers, and Watervliet Shaker Community

A reflection on Jafa's desire to craft a "black cinema" that is responsive to the "existential, political, and spiritual dimensions" of Black life. Comprised of found footage sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and citizen videos, all of it downloaded from the Internet, the clips have been woven together and set to Kanye West's anthem "Ultralight Beam." Together the images and music make for an intense, poignant meditation on African American life in the twentieth-century. This history is also the history, by necessity, of racism and prejudice.

A reflection on Jafa's desire to craft a "black cinema" that is responsive to the "existential, political, and spiritual dimensions" of Black life. Comprised of found footage sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and citizen videos, all of it downloaded from the Internet, the clips have been woven together and set to Kanye West's anthem "Ultralight Beam." Together the images and music make for an intense, poignant meditation on African American life in the twentieth-century. This history is also the history, by necessity, of racism and prejudice.

A reflection on Jafa's desire to craft a "black cinema" that is responsive to the "existential, political, and spiritual dimensions" of Black life. Comprised of found footage sampled from films, newscasts, sporting events, music videos, and citizen videos, all of it downloaded from the Internet, the clips have been woven together and set to Kanye West's anthem "Ultralight Beam." Together the images and music make for an intense, poignant meditation on African American life in the twentieth-century. This history is also the history, by necessity, of racism and prejudice.

Numa Perrier reimagines the story and moments in a distinct photograph of her mother. What results is a complex merging of memory, absence, and imagery set against the backdrop of Port Au Prince, Haiti.

A high-concept, in-your-face experimental short showcasing the unique beauty, energy and exuberance of one of NYC's last underground subcultures: Voguing & Ballroom

What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.

What does it mean to be Black in America in the 21st century? The recently formed Black American film group TNEG™ has set out to elucidate this very question. Hearing from the likes of fine artist Kara Walker and musical artist Flying Lotus, the film is based on a deceptively simple approach -- asking a refined list of black 'specialists' as well as 'uncommon folks' questions about what they think, and more importantly as lead director Arthur Jafa states, 'What they KNOW' -- the film is an unprecedented 'stream of the black consciousness' and a strikingly original and rarefied look at black intellectual and emotional life. What's so unorthodox about this simple approach is that the interviews were recorded separately from the images in the film. What results is a breathtaking, kaleidoscopic look of American black life from the dawn of three original filmmakers.

CBS 뉴스 기자, 로베르타 베스킨은 노동자들을 저임금과 폭력으로 착취하는 베트남의 나이키 공장을 취재하여 방송한다. 하지만 동계올림픽 독점중계권을 위해 나이키로부터 거액을 후원받은 CBS는 후속 방송을 중단하고 기자를 해고한다. 영화는 언론의 자유를 갉아먹는 각종 행태를 고발하며, 언론 개혁의 필요성을 이야기한다. (2013년 제18회 서울인권영화제)

Shot in the span of ten years, Black August Hip-Hop Project takes us to New York City, Cuba, and South Africa to raise awareness about political prisoners in the United States and abroad. The documentary features interviews with intellectuals and social activists including Assata Shakur, as well as performances by artists such as Talib Kweli, Mos Def, David Banner, Dead Prez, and Common.

"Deshotten 1.0" was the first collaboration between Arthur Jafa and Malik Sayeed and is the first TNEG project. Laying in a hospital bed, a young man replays the moments leading up to a nighttime shootout in the streets of New York.

A short and inconclusive treatise on women and gambling. The allure of risk taking, the contradictions of excessive behavior and a penchant for failure combine in this fairytale set in the abandoned decay which was onced a glamorous Atlantic City. A sentimental education at the seashore off-season.

뉴욕의 크리스마스, 성공한 의사 빌 하퍼드와 그의 아름다운 아내 앨리스는 빌의 친구 지글러가 여는 크리스마스 파티에 참석한다. 파티에서 두 사람은 각각 이성으로부터 강한 성적 유혹을 받는다. 그 다음날 앨리스는 빌에게 숨겨왔던 비밀을 털어 놓는다. 여름 휴가 때 우연히 마주친 한 해군 장교의 매력에 반해 그에게 강한 충동을 느껴 그와 하루밤만 보낼 수 있다면 남편과 딸 모두를 포기할 수 있을 것만 같다는 것이 그 내용이다. 평소에 아내를 정숙한 여자라 믿어 왔던 빌은 커다란 충격을 받는다. 그날 밤 환자의 부음 소식을 듣고 집을 나선 그는 앨리스가 장교와 정사를 나누는 환상에 시달린다. 얼마 후 빌은 대학 동창인 닉으로부터 부자들의 비밀 섹스 파티에 대한 이야기를 듣게 되고 닉의 반대를 무시한 채 파티장에 찾아간다. 그러나 빌의 위장 침입이 곧 밝혀지는데...

The career of iconic and influential poet and writer Audre Lorde is seen up until death.

Malian filmmaker and New York University professor, Manthia Diawara critiques visual anthropology through the work of Jean Rouch.

스피이크 리가 자신의 어린 시절을 보낸 브룩클린의 이웃을 소재로 만든 작품. 학교 선생님인 엄마와 재즈 뮤지션인 아빠 그리고 개구장이 5남매가 함께 사는 브룩클린의 카마이클 가족, 비록 넉넉하지는 못한 생활이지만 빈민가에서 이웃들과 서로 싸우기도 웃기도 하면서 즐겁게 살아가고 있다. 특히 옆집에 사는 백인 토미와는 앙숙지간으로 서로 쓰레기를 버리며 충돌이 끊이는 날이 없다. 아빠가 자기만의 음악을 하겠다고 직업을 버리는 바람에 엄마 혼자 살림을 꾸려나가고 있는 카마이클 가족. 결국 전기료를 내지 못해 전기선까지 끊기고 엄마와 아빠는 자식들 중 어린 트로이와 죠셉을 당분간 친척집에 맡긴다. 그러던 어느날 친척집에서 지내던 트로이에게 엄마가 병원에 입원했다는 소식이 날아드는데.

The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life referenced the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the elemental static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.

1902년, 미국 남부의 한 섬에 남아있던 아프리카계 흑인 가족이 미국 본토에서 새로운 삶을 시작하면서 아프리카 고유의 문화가 소실될 위기에 처한다.

1902년, 미국 남부의 한 섬에 남아있던 아프리카계 흑인 가족이 미국 본토에서 새로운 삶을 시작하면서 아프리카 고유의 문화가 소실될 위기에 처한다.

“Draw or Die” is the divine imperative received by the painter, Hannah, who is being nurtured by her Grandmother, but controlled by her pragmatic mother. When her Granny spirit shouts this command to Hannah, she closes a celebration of personal visions in a dance piece that is close to visionary in itself.

Ishmael Huston-Jones physically carries his mother, Pauline Jones, into the improvisational dance space. While she dyes eggs and speaks about family history, he improvises a rhythmic dance-counterpoint to her speech.

A man who despises his upwardly mobile lawyer brother reluctantly agrees to be best man at his wedding.