everybody watch this clip

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Arthur Jafa started out as a cameraman for the likes of Charles Burnett and Spike Lee (as well as later on Stanley Kubrick). Already as a cameraman he tried to experiment as much as possible and strived for a new cinematic language freed from the oppressive rules of (white) Western film history. Jafa later mentored fellow 90s Spike cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, who later also shot Belly and worked with Jafa on Eyes Wide Shut - together they would form the production company TNEG.

Sayeed already worked on music videos for 2Pac and Nas in the 90s, and Jafa and like-minded artist Kahlil Joseph would eventually also find music videos a fitting medium to present their avant-garde ideas to a bigger audience, working with the likes of Kanye West, Jay Z, Solange and Beyonce, and being able to create even more challenging work for avant-garde musicians like Flying Lotus and Shabazz Palaces. Much of this work is available on youtube.

Still, Jafa and Joseph are house-hold names only in the fine art world so far, with many of their works (like Joseph's short film for Kendrick's gkmc, as well as most of Jafa's non-music video work) being shown only in museums. I think it's time this changes though!! These guys are some of the most brilliant artists working in film today and should be celebrated, and more importantly given money to pursue more projects.

Also in the early 90s, Julie Dash, Jafa's then-wife, also became the first Black American woman director to get a wide release for a feature film with the highly unconventional independent production Daughters of the Dust, which Jafa also produced and filmed. She later wrote both a novelization and together with bell hooks a book about the making of the film.

Selected Collective Filmography (italics for shorts):
1982 Illusions - Julie Dash
1992 Daughters of the Dust - Julie Dash (produced, shot Arthur Jafa)
1995 Slowly This - Arthur Jafa
1996 All About U - Malik Hassan Sayeed
⠀⠀⠀All About U by 2Pac
1999 Tree - Arthur Jafa
2005 Gold Digger - Malik Hassan Sayeed
⠀⠀⠀Gold Digger by Kanye West
2009 Deshotten 1.0 - Arthur Jafa & Malik Hassan Sayeed
2010 Belhaven Meridian - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Belhaven Meridian by Shabazz Palaces
2011 Black Up - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Black Up by Shabazz Palaces
2011 The Mirror Between Us - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀original music by Flying Lotus
2013 Until The Quiet Comes - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Until the Quiet Comes by Flying Lotus
2014 m.A.A.d - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀good kid, m.A.A.d. city by Kendrick Lamar
2013 Wildcat - Kahlil Joseph
2014 Dreams Are Colder Than Death - Arthur Jafa
2014 Video Girl - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Video Girl by FKA twigs
2015 The Reflektor Tapes - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Reflector Tapes by Arcade Fire
2016 Love is the Message, The Message is Death - Arthur Jafa
⠀⠀⠀Ultralight Beam by Kanye West
2016 4:44 - Arthur Jafa
⠀⠀⠀4:44 by Jay Z
2016 Lemonade (director's cut) - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Lemonade by Beyonce
2016 Queen Sugar - Ava DuVernay (S2E9, S2E10 dir. Julie Dash)
2017 Process - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀Process by Sampha
2017 Music Is My Mistress - Kahlil Joseph
⠀⠀⠀starring Kelsey Lu and Shabazz Palaces's Ish
2017 Apex - Arthur Jafa
2017 Ms. Hillsonga - Arthur Jafa
2018 The White Album - Arthur Jafa
2018 akingdoncomethas - Arthur Jafa
2019 BLKNWS - Kahlil Joseph
2020 Wash Us In The Blood - Arthur Jafa
⠀⠀⠀Wash Us In The Blood by Kanye West
2021 Women of the Movement - Gina Prince-Bythewood (S1E4, S1E5 dir. Julie Dash)

Selection of Films Shot by Arthur Jafa and Malik Hassan Sayeed:
1983 My Brother's Wedding - Charles Burnett (Jafa - Assistant)
1992 Daughters of the Dust - Julie Dash (Jafa - DOP)
1992 Malcolm X - Spike Lee (Jafa - Operator)
1993 Seven Songs for Malcolm X - John Akomfrah (Jafa - DOP)
1994 Crooklyn - Spike Lee (Jafa - DOP)
1994 The Darker Side of Black - Isaac Julien (Jafa - DOP)
1995 A Litany for Survival - Ada Gay Griffin & Michelle Parkerson (Jafa - DOP)
1995 Clockers - Spike Lee (Sayeed - DOP)
1997 Gattaca - Andrew Niccol (Sayeed - Assistant)
1998 He Got Game - Spike Lee (Sayeed - DOP)
1998 Belly - Hype Williams (Sayeed - DOP)
1999 Eyes Wide Shut (Sayeed - DOP, Jafa - Operator)
2000 Rouch in Reverse - Manthia Diawara (Jafa - Operator)
2003 The Blues - created by Martin Scorsese (Jafa - Operator)
2013 Wildcat - Kahlil Joseph (Sayeed - DOP)
2014 Selma - Ava DuVernay (Jafa - Operator)
2014 In The Morning - Nefertite Nguvu (Jafa - Operator)
2016 Cranes in The Sky - Solange (Jafa - DOP)
2016 Don't Touch My Hair - Solange (Jafa - DOP)
2020 Black is King - Beyoncé (Sayeed - Assistant)

Selection of Writings by Arthur Jafa:
1992 Black Visual Intonation
2015 My Black Death

Essential Interviews & Articles:
Arthur Jafa's Radical Alienation
newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/arthur-jafas-radical-alienation
The Black Excellence of Kahlil Joseph
newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/the-black-excellence-of-kahlil-joseph
Kahlil Joseph Is Challenging Representations of Black Life in America
surfacemag.com/articles/kahlil-joseph-challenging-black-life
Conversation with Julie Dash
mubi.com/notebook/posts/without-living-in-the-folds-of-our-wounds-a-conversation-with-julie-dash
Arthur Jafa and the Future of Black Cinema
interviewmagazine.com/art/arthur-jafa
Art and the Idea of Black Film
flash---art.com/article/art-and-the-idea-of-black-film-a-conversation
Rewriting Hollywood History in Julie Dash’s Illusions
sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/illusions-julie-dash

Talks:

See also my thread for Terence Nance and The Umma Chroma, who tap into a similar avant-garde style
ktt2.com/hbos-random-acts-of-flyness-thread-4-free-on-youtube-this-friday-71354

I've been lowkey obsessed with Arthur Jafa and Kahlil Joseph the last two months or so, been meaning to make a thread for a while. Still in time for Black History Month!

@Soupvillain @marcusg @DwindlingSun @Yolko @PapiPedro @fellivarda (feel free to quote more ppl who might be interested)

Funny you mention i saw the Until the Quiet Comes film not too long ago, incredible

The 4:44 video always been crazy good

Remembered you're a big Flylo fan highkey one of my fav mv's oat floors me every time. So glad I got two of those t-shirts back in the day the white one is heavily worn out lol but I still love it, lowkey still hope they print them again some time tho

Only today found out Joseph was originally the sole director of Lemonade and Bey only decided to get other people to make parts again later. Joseph cut was only shown in museums and seems impossible to find online tho

In gonna look at this when I get a break at work

Damn i wonder of itll pop up eventually
Meant to check out some of his other stuff, where should i start?

it's crazy how much talent Jay got for those 4:44 vids, Safdies too title track was always the standout to me tho. One of the best examples of Jafa's collage style.

Highly recommend you check out "Love is the Message, the Message is Death" too, for which he used ULB (without licensing lol, but Kanye was later quoted as saying "it brought me back to life" and then hired him for Wash Us In The Blood). There used to be a yt upload but it was deleted, you can only find ppl filming museum walls now... you can follow me for a pm tho

UTQC already was the perfect primer tbh I'd say just check out his other music videos, the ones for Shabazz Palaces in particular. The short film for Kendrick is also a good introduction to his more experimental work. There's links in the filmography in op

Appreciate this

In

Didn't know Athur worked on Eyes Wide Shut

Kubrick was terrified of flying and shot EWS in England in front of greenscreens (which imo helps make it even more dreamy), Sayeed was the DOP and Jafa the operator of all the New York footage.

From the newyorker piece:

One Saturday afternoon, when Jafa was ten, their parents dropped them off at the white people’s theatre on the other side of town to see Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The theatre was empty except for a few white couples, who left before the intermission. “The lights go down, the movie begins, and it’s like being buried alive,” Jafa wrote, in a 2015 essay called “My Black Death.” “Even now, I’m still searching for an art experience capable of matching the effect this film had on me.” ...
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There was a coda to the experience. In the mid-nineties, when Jafa was working as a cinematographer, Kubrick hired him to be a second-unit cameraman for “Eyes Wide Shut.” Kubrick shot most of the film in England, but it was set in New York, and Jafa spent a lot of time filming locations there. “We were constantly shooting things over and over, because Kubrick kept sending notes saying would we try it again three degrees to the left, or three degrees to the right,” Jafa recalled. “He called many times a day, and occasionally the assistant director would say, ‘Stanley’s on the phone, he wants to say hi,’ and I would say, ‘Not now, I’m shooting.’ ” In 1999, returning from Europe to attend the film’s New York première, Jafa saw a newspaper headline: “stanley kubrick dies at 70.” “Stanley Kubrick was one of my heroes,” he said. “There was so much I wanted to say to him, and I’d had this fantasy that when we finished shooting we’d be able to have a proper conversation. I went to the première and got very depressed, trying to figure out why I had never spoken to him.”

Great thread

These dudes really inspire me creatively

in

Dope thread op! I've been putting people on to the Killing in the Name video ever since the other thread

ayy that one is big fire

Very much in that spirit I just uploaded and added to op a clip from BLKNWS which I couldn't believe wasn't available anywhere online, it's so damn relevant and universally true... Jafa is fkn brilliant, highly recommend all those talks in op too

s/o again to @Soupvillain for making me aware of that piece in the first place!

In! Stoked to look through this thread

So much to dig enjoy! I think you like me might find Jafa's interviews just as fascinating as his work too. Let me know what you think

appreciate this thread beyond words

appreciate this post

Nice thread, king.
I'ma return to this and look into all of this info you provided
Never looked into them before, but seeing the Kendrick, Cranes in the sky, 4:44, Kubrick, spike lee links and the first vid in OP

In asf glad you finally made this @op

🙏🏾 Witnessing history!!!