Title: BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
Foreign Title:
Year: 2025
Country: U.S.A
Language: Enflish
Director: Kahlil Joseph
Not a documentary in the conventional sense, nor a fiction film, Kahlil Joseph’s feature doesn’t even fit comfortably into the category of “avant-garde” cinema. It’s a work that defies categorization, so it’s probably best to write more about what it does rather than what it is.
The film opens with an image of Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. With subtitles rather than voiceover narration, Joseph fleshes out the backstory behind this massive, momentous volume: it was completed in 1998 by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and first published the following year, but in fact it had been the dream project of pioneering Black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois.
It’s from this beginning that one line of thought grows outwards: the film is in part a tribute to Du Bois and, through him, the idea of Pan-Africanism. Other tangents sprout up, recede, and reappear throughout the film. Most notably, there’s the fictional story of a Black female journalist covering the “Transatlantic Biennale” and the conceit that gives the film its title: BLKNWS is Black News, a media source constructed by Joseph.
The director communicates through silent subtitles, documentary and other forms of appropriated footage, as well as fictional recreation; the material rushes at us, guided by the rhythms of techno and other forms of urban music. It’s a technique — or, rather, a panoply of techniques — that brings to mind Jean-Luc Godard, the Soviet avant-garde of the Twenties and Chris Marker, but also music videos, Tumblr, YouTube remixes and other more accessible types of art.
The mixture is heady, but it goes down smoothly. Joseph has pulled off something major: he’s defined his own terms as an artist while making something that has wide appeal, something that can resonate on both popular and niche levels. As a work of political discourse, BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions is provocative and enlightening; as a feat of sonic and visual assemblage, it’s amazing; and as a work of entertainment, it hits the spot.
