Screening Dates
  • May 17, 2019 6:30
  • May 18, 2019 8:20
  • May 19, 2019 8:30
  • May 20, 2019 6:30
  • May 24, 2019 9:00
Vancouver Premiere

“Poetic, elliptical, concise … The gaze directed at the black faces and bodies in Black Mother is not a male gaze, or a documentarian’s gaze. It is a gaze of love.”

Glenn Kenny, New York Times

Acclaimed New York-based photographer Khalik Allah made waves in 2015 with his one-man documentary Field Niggas, an immersive, hyper-lyrical portrait of a single street corner in East Harlem. That sui generis work caught the eye of pop-music matriarch Beyoncé, who enlisted the 30-year-old director for the ​“visual” component of her landmark sixth album Lemonade. With his breathtaking new film, Allah hones his singular, sensorial aesthetic and trains his (many) cameras on the island nation of Jamaica, his mother’s birthplace. Shot on myriad formats (16mm, Super 8, digital HD) to match its multitude of off-screen voices, Black Mother is Allah’s frenetic, ecstatic, collage-like pilgrimage through Jamaican culture and history—as well as his personal, poetic homage to black womanhood and maternity. (The film’s movements are marked by the trimesters of a pregnancy.) An unforgettable, highly individualistic feat of ​“non-fiction” filmmaking by a prodigious talent to watch.

“Allah’s intimate, finely textured images … reverberate with a rapturous style to match their insight and empathy.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Brilliant … A challenging and profound deep-dive into Jamaican identity that rewards repeat viewings and confirms the aesthetic of a visionary filmmaker.”

Eric Kohn, IndieWire
Media