Selector: Kahlil Joseph

A compilation of music-centric films selected by Kahlil Joseph that explore different corners of the globe and the people who inhabit those frames.

Stripped to its core, film is an arrangement of sounds and images. A way to document a time and space, whether that place is real or imagined. Music’s integration with film allows viewers to ascend to a higher state mentally. Creating a juxtaposition between the sounds you are hearing and the images you’re witnessing, and through those juxtapositions your mind is permitted to wander, to create your own imagined scenarios, realities, you are in collaboration with the films themselves.

Sound in film has a way of cutting to your core emotionally. It’s a visceral experience. Similar to a favourite album, it’s not intellectual but often just a feeling. These films don’t need to lean on the crutch of plot mechanisms; they have the freedom and confidence to let you linger within their world, their characters.

This selection of films allows us to travel across the world, into historical pasts and imagined futures. A sonic odyssey through the music and styles of specific time periods, the inspiriting sounds of resistance, a contemplative midnight walk through your lonely city, or the catharsis that comes with singing your last breath.

Kahlil Joseph (Guest Curator)

Kahlil Joseph is a filmmaker and artist whose work BLKNWS features in ACMI’s new exhibition The Vinyl Factory: Reverb. He has directed music videos for artists including FKA Twigs, Kendrick Lamar, and Beyoncé, including her groundbreaking visual album Lemonade. The rarely screened director’s cut of Lemonade opens and closes our program. Join us for this special screening program featuring films by Lizzie Borden, Saul Williams, Jim Jarmusch, and Kahlil Joseph himself.