The Close-up

This week we’re excited to present a special conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with members of the filmmaking team behind the Main Slate selection BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, including director Kahlil Joseph, screenwriter Madebo Fatunde, artist Kaneza Schaal, and filmmakers Savanah Leaf and Raven Jackson, moderated by Jon-Sesrie Goff, Program Officer at the Ford Foundation. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions opens in select theaters this Friday, November 28th. Visual artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph’s video installation BLKNWS debuted in galleries and museums across the country in 2019, immersing viewers in the imagined world of a television news network from a Black perspective. After expanding this concept into a short film, Joseph has developed it even further into a feature film, and the result is a celebration of Black life that reconceptualizes and remediates common, corporate notions of journalism. Joseph’s sprawling film is an uninterrupted gush of ideas, mixing newly shot footage and exta