Black Earth Film Series: BLKNWS & REkOGNIZE

Conceived by Kahlil Joseph and fugitive broadcasting since 2019, BLKNWS presents an uninterrupted stream of highly-curated found footage, originally-produced segments, and current and historical news clips in a two-channel format that resists reactive narratives in favor of free-flowing knowledge association. Onye Anyanwu is currently producing an untitled BLKNWS feature film with A24 and Participant Media. Academy Award-nominated cinematographer and visual artist Bradford Young shares his three-channel video REkOGNIZE, a meditation on photography, memory, and movement. An in-person roundtable discussion with all three artists in conversation with Deana Lawson and Tina Campt follows the screening.

Black Earth is a film series organized by Princeton’s Dorothy Krauklis ’78 Professor of Visual Arts Deana Lawson in collaboration with Visiting Professor in the Program in Visual Arts and the Department of Art and Archaeology Tina Campt. It aspires to a twofold intervention in how we envision the multiple ecologies of our planet. On the one hand, it is a meditation on Earth’s landscape through a deep dive into one of the primary materials that supports and sustains it: soil. It engages soil in its most elevated state, as nutrient rich black soil that nurtures and enriches a multitude of species. On the other hand, it hones in on Earth as a social ecology inhabited, shaped, and enlivened by Black genius. The series includes films by Khalik Allah, Rob Herring, Kahlil Joseph and John Akomfrah and curated conversations with the filmmakers and a selection of their collaborators.

The Black Earth series is supported through the John Sacret Young ’69 Lecture Series fund. This event is cosponsored by Princeton’s Department of Art & Archaeology.

Join the Event

The conversation and screening event is free and open to the public. Advance tickets required; reserve tickets through University Ticketing.