The Berlin Film Festival is waiting to consult BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions filmmaker Kahlil Joseph and the project’s financier, Participant, before deciding whether a planned screening of the pic can take place during this year’s Berlinale.
The festival launch of BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, the first feature from video artist Joseph, was complicated this morning after it was announced that Participant had pulled the project from a debut slot at Sundance.
Reports state that Participant pulled the pic after learning Joseph made a second cut of the film, which was submitted to film festivals, including Berlin. We understand the festival is waiting to speak with Joseph and Participant before making a final decision. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions had been set to screen in Berlin’s Perspectives sidebar for fiction feature debuts. We’ve reached out to reps for Participant and Joseph for their official responses. We’ll update the report when we hear back.
The film’s official logline reads, “Preeminent West African curator and scholar Funmilayo Akechukwu’s magnum opus, The Resonance Field, Ieads her to the heart of the Atlantic Ocean, drawing a journalist into a journey that shatters her understanding of consciousness and time.”
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is produced by Onye Anyanwu, Amy Greenleaf, and Nic Gonda. Joseph is the director, writer and producer. He co-wrote the project with celebrated academics and cultural critics Irvin Hunt and Saidiya Hartman. Hartman is the author of several seminal works of cultural and historical criticism such as Scenes of Subjection and Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Her work has been closely associated with Joseph and other experimental video artists such as Venice Golden Lion winner Arthur Jafa.
The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 13-23.
