DOORS & PRE-SHOW: 7pm
SCREENING STARTS: 8pm
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MDFF is pleased to present the Toronto Premiere of Khalik Allah's FIELD NIGGAS preceded by Isiah Medina's TIME IS THE SUN. Both directors will be in attendance for a post-screening discussion. Tickets are available for advance purchase or $10 at the door.
FIELD NIGGAS (2014 / HD / 59 mins)
Dir. Khalik Allah
In a speech by Malcolm X, the “field negroes” were the most downtrodden of slaves: those forced to work the fields and who had nothing to lose, as opposed to the “house negroes,” who were better fed and dressed for their work in the master’s house, where they also lived. It is today’s “field slaves” that photographer Khalik Allah gives a voice by focusing his camera on the poorest residents of Harlem, in the night, at the corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue. They are people we often try to avoid seeing – homeless, addicted – who we now hear in timeless tones and with flashes of great beauty, thanks to the director’s unexpected stylistic choices: asynchronous sound, elegant slow-motion shots and garishly saturated colours. (RIDM)
Khalik Allah (b.1985) is a New York-based photographer and filmmaker whose work has been described as "street opera" simultaneously visceral, hauntingly beautiful and penetrative.
Khalik's passion for photography was sparked when he began photographing members of the Wu-Tang Clan with a camera he borrowed from his dad.Real and raw, his profoundly personal work goes beyond street photography. His eye for daring portraiture and bold aesthetics takes us into an entire world.
preceded by:
TIME IS THE SUN (2013 / HD / 29 mins)
Dir. Isiah Medina
The temporality of the real unbinding of the poverty-rabble follows a logic of eternity because at no time can the poor rabble re-enter legal and statist contexts if the possibility of accumulating property has also been lost. Its time is eternity because only the poverty-rabble presents the paradigm of absolute and complete unbinding.
Isiah Medina grew up in Winnipeg and lives in Toronto. He studied at Concordia University. He made his directorial debut with the short Semi-Auto Colours (2010), followed by Time is the Sun (2013). His first feature 88:88 (15) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival this year.
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