JENN NKIRU The filmmaker on recalibrating the black image

JENN

Kamasi Washington — Hub-Tones, 2018.

The filmmaker determined to recalibrate the black image

NKIRU NKIRU

Black To Techno, 2019.

Words ALEXANDER APLERKU

Since graduating from her MFA at Howard University, Jenn Nkiru has rapidly built a name for herself with her radical, magical short films. The south London-born director’s first film, En Vogue (2014), is a stunning portrait of New York’s vogueing and ballroom scene shot with Bradford Young and Arthur Jafa. Nkiru followed up with the award-winning Rebirth Is Necessary (2017), a video art piece in association with culture video platform Nowness, that unpacks the black experience through jazz, Afrofuturism and a mesmerising patchwork of archive footage. Soon followed her 2018 collaboration with Beyoncé and Jay-Z, working as second unit for director Ricky Saiz’s ultimate tour of the Louvre in their video to Apeshit. She’s also fed her love of music by directing cosmic videos for Neneh Cherry and Kamasi Washington.

Now the British Nigerian filmmaker’s latest offering, Black To Techno, explores Detroit’s invention of the titular musical genre in the 1980s, the people who birthed it and the praise the sound receives in Berlin. Part of Frieze and Gucci’s Second Summer of Love series, it’s a glitchy, multi-channel, deep dive into this industrial town and its own unique breed of protest music, which attests that techno “is not just a musical gesture but a philosophical, sonic and anthropological one.” After a busy few months, Nkiru has escaped to Bangkok for a well-deserved break, but still finds time to talk to Nataal…

ALEXANDER APLERKU Can you elaborate on what Rebirth is Necessary means to you personally? JENN NKIRU The film came out of a need for a new way of seeing things. I was thinking about ideas of being born again, of life and death, and life occurring through death. It came at a time when there was so much going on politically, racially. It was such a loaded period — it weighed on me, so I wanted to speak about it in my own language. To add to that, I’m a massive J Dilla fan. He had a mixtape called Rebirth of Detroit and track 13 is a song called ‘Rebirth Is Necessary’. Whenever I make films, I usually make playlists — not necessarily tracks that will appear in the film, but tracks that I can listen to when I create a piece. Rebirth Is Necessary kept popping up over and over again, almost by divine intervention, and I would always get ideas about the film whenever I heard it.

Neneh Cherry — Kong, 2018.

Black Star — Rebirth Is Necessary, 2017. AA Movement appears to be one of the most important pillars of your work. Would you say this is true? JN Movement is definitely integral, and it’s featured in all things that I have created so far. It’s an additional language, a tool to use in the visual filmmaking process. Movement is an idea that I’m looking out on multiple levels; one being the movement of people, the movement of bodies. The Peruvian choreographer Victoria Santa Cruz, whose work focused on the lineage of movement within black cultures, once said in reference to the middle passage that black people were never enslaved, because you can never enslave their inner rhythm. For me, that’s something that I’m always interrogating in my work. AA You look at queer identities in both En Vogue and Rebirth Is Necessary. Do you plan on revisiting this theme again? JN Absolutely! I would like to think that all of my films on some levels are queer. I’m on a mission to recalibrate black images, which are oftentimes centred on cis black males, in order to create something with fullness, that is representational and inclusive of all of us, images of women, images of queer identities. And this isn’t something I seek to be applauded for because I feel like in order to get us where I want us to be, these are the kinds of approaches we all need to be taking. It’s funny because at the São Paulo Film Festival, they gave Rebirth Is Necessary the LGBTQ film award, and I felt like an imposter accepting it as I don’t identify as queer — I didn’t want to take the space of someone else. But the organisers put me at ease when they said, “It’s not about you being queer or not. It’s about your work giving a voice to queer people.” AA Do you feel there’s an onus on you to show black people their magic and spiritual roots? JN I do, and it’s self-imposed. I’m such a curious person and, I’ve heard Nina Simone say this as well, one of my central preoccupations is to make people — all people, but particularly black people — curious about themselves. So in turn, that means curious to feel some pride in themselves. I‘ve always felt that at our essence, at our roots, we are a people who harbour a lot of spiritual privilege — in the most beautiful way — and I really believe that freedom lies inside that, so I’m constantly getting people to think about spirit and nature in my fi lms. The closer we get to ourselves spiritually,

the more liberated we will become as a people. AA So do you make your films for black people? JN My most direct audience is black people. I would hope that my films create space for all people to come in and see themselves on some level, but there will always be a particular group who will naturally have the fullest experience, because their experience is a mirror of my own. With Black To Techno, I would imagine that the direct audience would be black folk in Detroit, but it doesn’t mean that no one else can come into it and get an experience. Black people can go into a movie theatre and see a white cis man saving the world and still be able to see ourselves in that. I’m interested in what happens when you make the saviour a trans person or black woman, or even a child. AA The US features a lot in your work, why do you think that is? JN I guess on some level I’m constantly looking at Africa’s diaspora and trying to figure out how to realign us all. But a lot of my commissions tend to come from the US, so in turn, the US features in my work a lot. Also I went to film school at a historic black college in Washington DC, which has influenced my ideas. However I want to feature British culture in my work more. I mean, I could easily move to the US, but one reason why I’ve stayed in the UK is we have such a rich culture that remains untapped, that deserves more attention and appreciation, and that’s something I’m focused on. AA Can you say more about Black To Techno? JN The film looks at the black roots of techno and its relationship to its fandom in Berlin. It premiered at the Paramount during the inaugural Frieze art fair in LA, which was really surreal. The response was incredible. That film was commissioned in September so I’ve spent the last few months putting it together, a labour of love. So much went into it, which is why I’m in Bangkok right now, the reason why I’ve run away. I’m taking my time before I commit to the next project. AA How conscious are you of your impact on rising black women directors? JN I don’t know how conscious I am of it, but I’m in communication with a lot of black women filmmakers and black filmmakers in general, I kind of see

Black Star — Rebirth Is Necessary, 2017.

Black To Techno, 2019. it as a communal thing. I have no interest in being one of very few, that’s really boring to me and it’s not an industry or world I want to be in. The more of us, the better. Often when people ask me to do something and I can’t do it because of scheduling conflicts, I give them a list of ten great filmmakers who can, and most of the time those lists are 100 per cent black and 90 per cent women. There are other things I like to do very quietly, like mentoring. AA Do you feel as though you got that treatment when you were rising up? JN No, I didn’t. I know what it is as a person to want something and to go for a dream and not have the support. I went to film school and I had amazing people who I could talk to, but outside of that I’ve never had a mentor. I’ve had to build paths because I’ve never had them made for me. I don’t come from a rich family, there’s no nepotism here. I grew up on a Peckham estate. My journey is the brute force of my dream. I just refused to allow anyone to tell me no. AA What do you enjoy about collaborating with musicians? JN Music is my first language, and a central preoccupation in my work is the relationship between sound and vision. Music videos are a great gateway to explore that, and to experiment with ideas — trying out concepts in the short form as opposed to making a feature film, which can often take years. AA What music are you listening to at the moment? JN I listen a lot to Kamasi Washington, I love jazz. It unlocks my creativity. I’ve also been listening to J*Davey a lot. It’s so funny because Jack from J*Davey came to that screening in LA and I was thinking about the randomness of it. I used to listen to J*Davey all the time on Myspace. I’m listening to Jill Scott and Marvin Gaye again too. AA What is your holiday reading? JN The first one is Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, an account from an enslaved man from Benin brought to the US during the transatlantic slave trade. Then I have If Beale Street Could Talk, which I’m reading because of the film. Then I have Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes and The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard — a philosophical book on architecture. The final book is one that my friend gave me, You Can't Touch My Hair by Phoebe Robinson.