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It’s quite an accomplishment to segue seamlessly between an Eric André prank video and a high-minded curatorial lecture, and director Kahlil Joseph has made a film in Blknws: Terms & Conditions in which a wild jump feels entirely natural. The first feature by the multidisciplinary artist is technically an outgrowth from his video art installation of the same name. Yet this endeavor’s aims feel greater than just adaptation.

Joseph has found a means of polyphonous expression for the intellectual point of origin for his artistic exploration: the Encyclopedia Africana, an expansive compendium of African studies edited by renowned scholars Henry Louis Gates and Anthony Appiah. Blknws is a vessel for conveying an eye-popping number of entries that merited inclusion in Gates and Appiah’s survey of Black history, culture, and identity—all of which come annotated with their corresponding page number in the tome. But Joseph quickly expands...

Before his death in 1963, the scholar W.E.B. DuBois spent decades trying to publish an encyclopedia about the histories and cultures of people of African descent. He enlisted friends, petitioned colleagues and sought funding for the multi-volume project from government agencies and private donors. Despite his best efforts, DuBois’ vision wouldn’t be realized until 1999, when Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, with the help of Wole Soyinka and a global community of artists and scholars, published Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience.

The mission of DuBois’ project — to offer a new generation access to information about Black people rivaling Encyclopedia Britannica — infuses Kahlil Joseph’s hypnotic debut feature Blknws: Terms & Conditions, a kinetic blend of a fictional Afro-futurist narrative, archival research on decades of Black visual and multimedia work, and personal history.

Expanding on his 2019 art installation of the same name, Joseph intersperses the story...

The premiere of the genre-blurring feature “Blknws: Terms & Conditions” at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival is a drama in and of itself: just days before it was scheduled to screen, the rights-holder to the film pulled it from the festival. Then, a few days into the festival, a surprise sale of the rights to a new owner cleared the way for the film to screen after all. Neither Kahlil Joseph, the artist and filmmaker who directed the film, nor Shari Frilot, the Senior Film Programmer who introduced the Monday, January 27 screening, directly acknowledged these events. But Frilot invited Joseph to the stage by not too subtly introducing him as a “tenacious, unstoppable artist” to explosive cheers. That this struggle over…well…terms and conditions, played out around the unveiling of the film is almost satirical, as it reinforces a need for the kind of rebirth the world of “Blknws: Terms & Conditions” insists upon.

Never underestimate the power of independent art. Kahlil Joseph’s experimental movie Blknws: Terms & Conditions will definitely be making its world premiere here at Sundance. The festival just released a statement. The movie was pulled by the pic’s financially embattled financier Participant after accusing the filmmaker that he was submitting a secret cut of the film to Sundance and Berlin.

“Sundance Film Festival is overjoyed to welcome Blknws: Terms & Conditions back to the Festival lineup. This boundary-pushing, relentlessly innovative art deserves to be shared after years of work by the filmmaking team, and the Festival is proud to have it as part of our programming,” reads a statement tonight.

Blknws will have a press and industry screening tomorrow, Sunday, Jan. 26 at 1Pm Mt at the Holiday Village Cinemas. The premiere will happen on Monday, Jan. 27, 9Am Mt at the Egyptian Theater.

How did the pic get back on the sked?...

The Sundance Institute’s Interdisciplinary Program today named its 2021 grantees, also unveiling those selected as 2021-2022 Art of Practice Fellows. Each fellow and grantee was supported in a designated field or a combination of them, including emerging media, interdisciplinary, music, and/or theater.

Sundance’s latest grantees are Melis Aker (Theater), Shariffa Ali (Interdisciplinary), DeAndre James Allen-Toole (Music), Fabian Almazan (Music), Lily Baldwin (Interdisciplinary), Mariam Bazeed (Interdisciplinary), Carla LynDale Bishop (Emerging Media), Kathryn Bostic (Interdisciplinary), William Caballero (Interdisciplinary), William Calhoun (Interdisciplinary), Raven Chacon (Interdisciplinary), Penelope Jagessar Chaffer (Emerging Media), Layale Chaker (Interdisciplinary), Maya Chami (Interdisciplinary), Heather Christian (Theater), Cora Yi-Huan Chung (Music), Ryan Cohan (Music), Colectivo Los Ingrávidos (Interdisciplinary), Ty Defoe (Interdisciplinary), Heather Dewey-Hagborg (Emerging Media), Angèlica Ekeke (Emerging Media), JJJJJerome Ellis (Interdisciplinary), Tim Fain (Music), Kelley Nicole Girod (Theater), Ben Goldberg (Music), Robert Casey Goodwin (Interdisciplinary), Fernando Gregório (Interdisciplinary), Porpentine Heartscape (Interdisciplinary), Dov Heichemer (Emerging Media), Sultana Isham (Interdisciplinary...