A new sea­son at the BFI South­bank show­cas­es the mar­vels of Afrofuturism

“Anoth­er place in the uni­verse, up under dif­fer­ent stars: that’s where the ulti­mate des­tiny would come in.” So declared cos­mic prophet and mas­ter of funk Sun Ra in the film Space Is the Place, giv­ing a suc­cinct sum­ma­tion of the Afro­fu­tur­ist cor­pus and its aspi­ra­tional goals. An oppressed Black pop­u­la­tion can find free­dom or hope only by leav­ing our com­pro­mised Earth and its dimen­sion of inequal­i­ty, seek­ing alter­nate soci­eties in the deep­est reach­es of the galaxy or par­al­lel uni­vers­es, with all pre­con­ceived notions about Black­ness upend­ed by the qual­i­ty of the unfamiliar.

Sun Ra’s head-melter isn’t part of it, but a new sea­son at the BFI South­bank pays homage to the nar­ra­tive tra­di­tion he helped solid­i­fy with a dizzy­ing line­up of far-out Black cin­e­ma address­ing issues that still per­sist here on our spin­ning blue mar­ble. In the Black Fan­tas­tic will run from 13 to 31 July, show­cas­ing a line­up of Afro­fu­tur­ism, sci-fi, and films oth­er­wise root­ed in the super­nat­ur­al as they search for answers to ques­tions ground­ed in the everyday.

The BFI series is includ­ed under the larg­er umbrel­la of an exhi­bi­tion by the same name on dis­play at the Hay­ward Gallery, hav­ing opened on 29 June and stick­ing around until 18 Sep­tem­ber. Curat­ed by Ekow Eshun, the show fea­tures the work of eleven artists from the African dias­po­ra explor­ing themes com­mon to the cin­e­ma accom­pa­ny­ing it: iden­ti­ty, poten­tial, tech­nol­o­gy, the fusion of tra­di­tion and modernisation.

The BFI’s sea­son gath­ers a cor­nu­copia of sub­ver­sive bril­liance, in some cas­es from films not often shown on the reper­to­ry cir­cuit. Kuso, Steve ​“Fly­ing Lotus” Ellison’s mag­nif­i­cent­ly dis­gust­ing vision of the apoc­a­lypse, hasn’t often played in brick-and-mor­tar cin­e­mas since its straight-to-stream­ing release. Same goes for Mati Diop​‘s eerie and haunt­ing Atlantics, which gar­nered a wave of glow­ing reviews pri­or to a qui­et drop on Netflix.

They’re joined by a hand­ful of more crit­i­cal­ly fet­ed canon picks, includ­ing Souley­man Cissé’s Malian fable Yee­len and the ground­break­ing Sene­galese clas­sic Tou­ki Bou­ki (which Eshun him­self will be on hand to intro­duce). From Amer­i­ca, kin­dred-mind­ed indies like Daugh­ters of the Dust and Eve’s Bay­ou con­tin­ue and expand the con­ver­sa­tion start­ed over­seas. A pro­gram with­in this series titled The Black Atlantic also com­piles short films as vari­a­tions on the theme of forced migra­tion and the slave trade, with a Q&A to fol­low the screen­ing on the 18^th.

One could argue that projects like In the Black Fan­tas­tic are the rea­son reper­to­ry cin­e­ma pro­gram­ming exists, not just bring­ing atten­tion to deserv­ing work but active­ly broad­en­ing the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of who makes great cin­e­ma. The day may soon come when young stu­dents of the cin­e­ma mas­ters will learn the name Djib­ril Diop Mam­bé­ty along with Kuro­sawa, Bergman, and Godard, the essen­tial artist’s lega­cy seen and appre­ci­at­ed in its full glory.

In the Black Fan­tas­tic runs at the BFI and across South­bank venues until Sep­tem­ber 18.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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