AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, the Peabody Award-winning series by Black Public Media (BPM) and WORLD, is bringing for another gripping season of powerful films, featuring two stories featuring LGBTQ+ protagonists to Season 17. The films Neptune Frost, by Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams, and Mama Gloria, by Luchina Fisher, present an Afrofuturistic tale of an intersex hacker and the real-life story of a pioneering trans woman. Presented by Black Public Media, WORLD, and PBS Plus, AfroPoP remains the only U.S.-based public media show focused on independent documentaries and narrative films from across the global African diaspora. Not to get them confused with us at Afropop Worldwide and World Music Productions, we are ultimately in support of each other’s work, and share their success in bringing the diversity of the Black world to public television by showcasing all five films this season.
Neptune Frost is directed by a power-packed cinephile couple, Williams and Uzeyman, connecting the dots between colonialism, extraction, and how it has fueled modernity and is the basis of technology today. Luminary hybrid genre poet, screenwriter, actor, philosopher, composer, and modern griot, Saul Williams, entered the American and global black consciousness in 1989 with his breakout performance and co-authorship as an actor and poet in Slam. As a cinematographer and art director, Anisia Uzeyman is an actress, playwright, and director, and was born in Rwanda. She studied drama at the École Supérieure de Théâtre in France, and her directorial debut, Dreamstates, was shot entirely on iPhones and starred Saul Williams, William Nadyla, and Beau Sia. Both directors have charted a courageous future for African cinema with their keen faculties of imagination, foresight, and spiritual intuition, making this groundbreaking film a reality and acting as conduits to a tale whose time has come.
Neptune Frost premiered on WORLD on Monday, June 23, and is now available to stream on worldchannel.org. Described as an Afrocentric musical set in the hilltops of Burundi, the film follows Neptune, an intersex runaway portrayed in dual, resonant performances by Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo, alongside Matalusa, an escaped coltan miner played by Bertrand Ninteretse (AKA Kaya Free). Together, they spark a hacker collective that aims to overthrow an authoritarian government profiting from their country’s exploited natural resources. The film, which is executive produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Stephen Hendel, among others, is streaming as part of an AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange episode.
Saul Williams: How are you?
Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe: Beautiful people.
Anisia Uzeyman: Hello.
I’m just like 15 minutes, I think 10 minutes away from watching the end of the film. This is the first time I’ve watched it.
Saul: Amazing.
Anisia: Amazing!
I’m where Innocence comes to the camp, comes to Martyr LoserKing.
Saul and Anisia: (Laughing) Nooooo!!!
But the electricity was being fixed this morning,… So when I started, it was like an hour and a half ago
Saul: Thanks for watching!
Anisia: Yes, thanks so much!
Okay, first of all, congratulations on this film. I’m formulating the words in my head right now about how profound this movie is. It speaks to every moment that we as people of the global South are in right now. How are you feeling about what’s on your mind right now about this?
Saul: Everything is there right now.
How are you two feeling right now after having made this amazing, futuristic, prophetic film? How are you feeling when you see what’s going on around us, right?
Anisia: Well, I mean, I think it’s hard, it’s difficult to not feel that effectively, there are so many topics in the film that we touched on that are very prescient and accurate, and that entail a little bit of sadness. On the one hand, I think a little bit shocking. That you are writing in a fictional way, in many ways, that are very accurate. And then on the other hand, it gives you the tool to read what’s happening.
Saul: I think it kind of feels like things can’t move fast enough in some ways in terms of resistance, in terms of let’s say, our ability, because it makes me feel like we have so much more work to do. We have so much more to explore in cinema through our art if we think of it as a tool that facilitates resistance, a tool that facilitates growth and questioning. I’m clear on the fact that there’s always going to be a prophetic, or there always can be a prophetic sort of lens on creative work. I mean, especially when we consider that we began writing and working on this project around 2012. So at a time when the global majority knew what was happening, but in the core of the Empire, they weren’t yet ready to talk about extraction or the tools, the resources being used, and drones…
Anisia: …and data.
Saul: …and data and all this stuff is coming to a head. To me, it’s like, okay, we have to reload. It’s extremely important that we continue to envision and imagine. It’s not easy to make a film. It’s not easy to find the proper partners to produce what we’re doing.
Wow, yes. Steve Hendel, a Broadway producer, one of the producers of Neptune Frost, was one of our board members at Afropop Worldwide. He’s a smart man to have backed you on this because it’s also a musical. I mean, you can see it on the stage as well. You know, that’s the interesting thing about the film is that it’s not just cinema, but at the same time, it’s live theater. The music, by the way, and the songs are just incredible. And the cinematography and art direction by Anisia are breathtaking; the casting was brilliant. There are so many things that I could say that are just so on point. So, how did you two meet? Tell me about your story. How did you two decide to come up with this idea working together?
Saul: I would say that a layer of the first layer of the work came from the encounter between Anesia and I, like the encounter between Matalouza and Neptune. You know, it was our meeting and our desire to not only want to be together, but to find a way in which we can work together that helped birth this project. Of course, nothing happens in a vacuum. So we were working together on a film in Senegal directed by Alain Gomis called Tey in Wolof, aka Today, Aujourd’hui. And as actors, we were working. And while we were there, we were also beginning through conversation to learn a bit about a few phenomena like e-waste camps.
It’s also around the time that we were starting to learn about Colton, Cobalt, and the minerals in the phones. It was there that we started thinking of the drum as the earliest form of wireless communication. So all of these things, there are so many things that were happening in the world. This is 2011, 2012. This is the time of the Arab Spring, a lot of people were talking about hackers, WikiLeaks. There were those corrosive laws that were being passed in parts of the continent, anti-LGBTQIA laws, which were done as a bargaining chip for aid or what have you from Christian evangelists. We were aware of a lot going on, and we wanted to find a way to talk about a lot at once. Once we kind of like said, okay, it’s a hacker, it’s this, it’s that, we were able to like tune in on a story, and that connected all of these dots. I think that the most important thing was to try to find a way to tell a story that connects a lot of different amazing and horrible happenings at the same time.
We were also inspired by a lot of the creative work coming out of the Continent at the time, a lot of the recycling and upcycling of materials. So all these things found a way into the story. We were inspired by the music. All of these things found their way into the story. And it was just really a desire, but it stemmed from a desire of wanting to work together. And also, I had a personal desire of wanting to put all of the stuff that I love doing, whether that’s writing, making music, and all that, into one project as well.
Binary Stars from The Original Soundtrack of NEPTUNE FROST by Saul Williams from his album Unanimous Goldmine. Matalusa stands in front of blue computer screens. Photo credit: Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman
It’s a hybrid for sure. And the spirituality of the piece is what I also think is just so on time as well. You have the technological aspect, but the technology and the spirituality coming together in terms of that black consciousness, that melanated kind of consciousness, is a departure from anything we’ve ever seen. And that’s why I think the piece is before its time, but the time is now. That’s the interesting thing. How did that spirituality enter into the dialogue?
Saul: It was never not there.
Anisia: Yeah. The bedrock of the story is spirituality, I think, more than anything else. I think the story is also a question of linking or bridging or connecting ancestral knowledge with the future and realizing that it’s all like intertwined and that what happens is projected and that what is projected is happening. So I think from the moment you write and play with time and with technology and with our own powers through all that, I think spirituality is a kind of technology too. So I think it’s very organic too. Yeah, I think it’s organic to the story, organic to the topic.
Saul: It’s organic to the topic that circulates around the question of power, and the navigation of power, whether that’s in Neptune’s body or in the society as a whole. And the thing that moves the invisible force that connects the viral realm, which was always wireless, is always connected to the spirit. And I think that also is a liberating factor, because I think when you divorce these conversations from spirituality, then you end up, kind of exactly where we are now with what’s happening in the world and Western powers, heralding a kind of technology that is more destructive than it is harmonizing the planet. If you divorce these conversations from the spirit, then yeah, what’s happening in the world is exactly what happens. So it’s also a way of re-centering.
Anisia: And then there is also that funny thing, that sometimes you tell a story in memory thinking that they have never heard it, and they will tell you each time, I know that story.
Saul: This is an old story.
Anisia: This is an old folk story. And that was also such an exploration to know that the Dogon of Mali had computed series A and series B before anybody. And that is what makes the code for our computers. All those things are so important for us to understand as a people about what our ancestors have done with computers. All those things are, and it’s beautiful to take them in and see how you can translate them into a story and a film, I think.
Yes, you did that. You did that masterfully. You did. You did that masterfully. And the way that you infused that mythos, the mythology of all of these, and just the way that you infused the mythology, I think the beginning is that you name a place Digitaria, that part of Dogon cosmology that you infused in the film on many levels. And this is the aspect of the system, which you made very clear with the characters and the character development that they knew, they know who they are. They know that they are the source, and that they’re the beginning and that they’re the end, if they’re going to be anything. So I found that really sort of beautiful so far. Remember, I’ve got 15 more minutes left to watch the film, but you’ve made that very clear so far that the future is us. And I think there’s a sense that there’s an urgency that you bring forth so clearly. And so I’m looking forward to seeing how you resolve it.
Saul: Can’t wait until you see it. (Laughter)
Pensent Comme Leurs Livres Disent (Think Like They Book Say), a song from Saul Williams’ Album Unanimous Goldmine from the original soundtrack of NEPTUNE FROST.
Let’s talk about the language. You know, I think you’ve got the language down in such a masterful way. I mean, just the name MartyrLoserKing, on its own. You know, when I think about what’s going on in Gaza, and how they refer to themselves as martyrs. Tell me more about it. It’s clear, your love of language is there for goodness’ sake.
Saul: I mean, the first layer of that, from what you said, when you think about what’s happening on it, it has, and what have you. One of the early questions that I was asking while writing was when there will no longer need to be martyrs? And, you know, in order for the truth to prevail, in order for justice to reign, to take hold, you know? And so for a long time, I was thinking of these characters as the final martyrs. No more martyrs after these guys. Okay? So that’s, I guess, the connection with now this word that is on the tip of our tongues every day, martyrs and martyrdom, is of course there have been martyrs throughout time, but we had no foreknowledge, of course, that it would be so prevalent in the social dialogue and reality of those on the ground in Gaza and not only there across, many countries where there’s, you know, atrocities occurring. Language. I was very excited about language. This is one of the things that happened when we were liberated from the idea of it being a play for the stage, because initially, when writing we were thinking of Broadway. Specifically thinking of going to Broadway. That was the idea, and so we met with a Broadway producer, Stephen Hendel.
Yeah. Steve Hendel.
Saul: Yeah. Who said, “I love this. I’ve lost a lot of money on Broadway”?
Yeah.
Saul: And he said, “I think I’d be more excited if this were a film. Have you considered that?” and in considering that was the realization that if it were a film, (this was against the producers will), we knew if we were on location, then it would not be in English because that’s one of the things we hate in cinema, right? Is seeing something that takes place in another country, but the language that they’re speaking is some sort of accented English, and that’s just about the dollars of selling the film, right?
I love that choice. Great choice.
Saul: Yeah. And then aside from that, as an American traveling, I’m always so inspired when I’m sitting amongst a lot of my peers who are multilingual. And so the time that I’ve spent is say in Rwanda or wherever, though, and people are associating one frame of thought or one idea with one language and saying another term in another language, because that’s the language that makes sense and is best, and being able to jump around with languages, because that’s technology too. I mean, we’re talking about tools of communication, and to have multilingual tools of communication is an advantage. So the other question was, why should the film not reflect that? Why should the film not reflect that? One of the most inspiring aspects to me about spending time,
Anisia: About the future…
Saul: About the future and all that is the melding of languages, so that was very crucial. And of course, there’s also the realities that you encounter that are like, wow. Kinyarwanda, for example, was seldom featured in a film before, and it’s a beautiful language that many people have never had the opportunity to hear. So you’re also sharing that, which becomes exciting in another way. So then the other part that was very fun for me was writing lyrics in English, knowing that they would not be in English in the final product, meaning that we spent time with poets, musicians, with writers, translating the text. But knowing that in advance informed how I even wrote the songs in terms of word choice, so that it would never be so precise. There’s a kind of loose writing as a more precise translation. I mean, it’s technical, but it was fun in terms of being able, because, of course, when you’re translating a song, it needs to rhyme. And I was very attached to the English, meaning that I was attached to the subtitles. As a poet, I was most excited to be able to say, I wrote the subtitles. As a poet, I was very excited to write the subtitles.
Anisia: As if you were the translator
Saul: But to achieve that, as if I were the translator. Yeah, that was the thing. I wanted it to feel like that, so I translated the thing back into English. There are layers of work that I could go on and on about because it was very fun and exciting. But yeah, intentionally, it was important that the film carry that, liberatory relationship to language, and something that was grounded in what’s spoken on the ground.
Very interesting. Tell me more about your relationship with Rwanda and Congo.
Anisia: Well, I was born there. I think a lot of the inspiration at the beginning of the writing, and then more so when we decided that we would shoot in Rwanda, was also made around my perspective, my comment, and what I wanted to show, was things that and we don’t hear a lot about except in a certain context, right? Until today, if you look up one that we all know, what comes up with that research, right? And so I was very, think one of the, yeah, the secret inside of Neptune First is that I wanted to see the movie I would have loved to see when I was a child. There is something that is very much a tribute also to that place for me and us. A discussion around how we can approach that place in ways that have not been approached. And then in relation to Congo, I think that’s more interesting than in the first, when it was conceptualized, we decided that it was the village, that Digitaria would be shot in Burundi. To distance ourselves a little bit from the politics of the moment.
Hmm.
Anisia: The problems that were occurring, like you know, and that we were aware of, and to give also the possibility to think about and to speak about those, the exploitation that is killing that region. And then it’s also talking about coloniality and what I think, and the relationship to the Congo in this film is really, I think, articulated around colonialism. I have the impression that Congo hasn’t been through their independence yet, that they didn’t have time to, you know, to really, you know, since Patrice Lumumba was there for only six months and then from then on. And so there is a thing around Congo that is so, I think it was important to talk about the mines and all of those things also in that context, in the context of a perpetual exploitation, a perpetual vampirization of this place. And we don’t know how we’re going to talk about it without talking about the West and the problem that the West cannot leave. And so that’s one of the things in the writing that was very clear. For instance, a poem like Colton Has Cotton, right in the film? You always say that anything that has created modernity has been extracted in Congo for a very long time, from sugar to coffee.
Saul: …to rubber.
Anisia: Yes, sugar, coffee, rubber. Yeah, so that is the relationship in the film that we approach in regards to the horror that is happening in Congo. You cannot unpack that thing if you are not talking about what the West, and the colonial relationship that’s still prevalent on all…
Saul: …the extractive greed, and you cannot dive into any, any of the historical stuff that’s happened in that region between Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, that whole region, without those workers there, and there have been so many martyred. There’s been so much extraction. There’s been so many games played, and obviously, those games continue to be played. So the thing is, though, that we knew that we wanted to rely on a sort of fictitious story. It was important that we play with the idea of fiction. We are not investigative reporters or journalists, even though we did extensive research on all that was happening and all that has happened, it was important to kind of remove ourselves from that reality a bit. And that was a bit of a dance, because we thought of filming, for example, in different places. At one point, we thought of filming in Haiti, even. We visited Haiti. We saw work that was being done with recycled computer parts. Yeah, yeah, we thought about that.
The iridium story, of course. mean, that’s the Haitian stories. That rare mineral.
Saul: Yes. Exactly. So, you know, this was supposed to be a parallel universe. That’s what we were trying to sort of play with the idea. And the hard part is, like Anisia was saying, you type Haiti into a computer, you know what comes up. You type Congo into a computer, and you know what comes up. You type Rwanda into a computer, and what comes up? You type Burundi into the computer. And maybe you’re like, maybe you have a bit less knowledge about what’s going to come up. Right? It’s not necessarily on the front page of the news every day. And so part of the exploration of where we would situate, there are two things, right? Where the story would be situated and where we would shoot. We floated a lot of ideas about where we would shoot. We always kind of landed in Burundi as far as where the story would be situated.
Anisia: Yeah, and today it’s linked to the Congo. And to go back to Congo to speak more about what’s happening today with the new deals and stuff like that, I guess you heard about, which is like, it’s hard work. For us who have extensively researched natural resources.
Saul: Yeah
Anisia: The business around it, the culture around it, the way it perpetuates the worst form of colonialism all around. To have seen that and to be… I’m still waiting for the Congolese people to address their power, their politicians. I believe that things come from the people. I really know that anything that comes from the structures and the powers will doom the people. That it’s gotta come from the people.
Saul: It’s gotta come from the people.
Anisia: And I can’t wait for the Congolese people to address their power. I don’t know in what condition it’s gonna be possible, but I’m positive that anything that would entail change, a real change in Congo, will come from the people. And that is also part of the story of Neptune Frost.
Saul: And that applies to everybody. Absolutely. applies everywhere. That’s the same feeling I have in the United States. Change is not going to come from the top down. It can only come from the people who spend time trying to generate some sort of political change…
You were talking about the personal sovereignty and communal collective sovereignty go hand in hand. Only once people recognize that they have sovereignty and they’re willing to, and the thing is, know what, the interesting thing is it’s only through chaos that that can start to manifest that seems to be the trajectory of human history is that unless there’s chaos is that people have that opportunity to look internally, look at themselves and say okay enough is enough. I think you just did an amazing job at illustrating that through all of your character development, how all of the characters from the first scene with the mining, with that first character who decides that he wants to leave the mine and look for this new kingdom. But I’d like to hear more about that.
Saul: So yeah, it’s funny because it makes me think about a few things, right? Between what’s happening in Gaza, what’s been on the news, now, at this point, what’s happening around the world, in Sudan, all of these places. And of course, there are the power structures set up like the UN that are supposed to play a role, but we know that it’s useless. We know that it’s been useless to stop genocides. It’s been useless to utilize the power that people, and especially smaller countries, have invested in it, in the hopes of some sort of justice. It’s dominated and controlled in the same way that people are by that global minority that holds so much power and weaponry, and influence on this planet, really for the sake of exploiting us for resources. Until people connect, right, and realize the connections that we have and the ability that we have to organize and stand up to power. We’re not gonna see any real change, right? We see neoliberal change and what have you, but we don’t see real, actual change. So that’s true on the ground in Congo, that’s true on the ground in the United States, that’s true on the ground, wherever we are and…
Anisia: In the UK.
Saul: In the UK, where we are now, it’s true on the ground there that the people perhaps don’t want to be reminded of the social upheaval that came about. Perhaps they’ve either romanticized or kept a distance from the idea of a real social revolution. But I feel like the more that we see happening, the closer we get to the fact that we may have to face these things in our lifetimes, the same way that people on the ground in Gaza are facing things in their lifetimes right now. It’s not a monolith there, but there is a sort of solidarity in the sense of knowing that there’s a true freedom that we’re fighting for in Gaza, I’m talking about. And that is exemplary for so many of us in understanding the type of resilience that it will take and what we have to face to push through these forces, which are heartless, which are brutal, which are obviously aiming to kill and exterminate as many of us as possible for their own gain and prosperity. These are not metaphors anymore.
Anisia: Yeah.
Saul: These are not metaphors anymore. As a poet, that’s the thing what stands out to me is that all of the metaphors have come to life, and it’s been a minute. It’s been a minute. You’re a Bible thumper, you go, wow, the armies are literally on the Tigris and the Euphrates, like none of these things are abstractions. These are facts. We find ourselves within it, and how we allow ourselves to be indoctrinated or confused by colonial mind states or forces. The things that fracture us are the things that we aim to discuss as well, right? Because in so many ways, we become fractured. We become fractured through religion. We become fractured through this sort of individualistic capitalist idea that if I can make more money, then everything will be fine. So that we become extracted from the sense of community and the fact that we need each other and that there are things of greater importance than money, and it’s this sort of thing that the work that they do is not just bombs. It’s also very psychological. It’s very psychological, and so that “emancipating yourself from mental slavery,” that whole thing. All of this is so crucial right now in any of the topics we’re discussing and in any of the reasons we’re discussing.
And that’s where the spirituality is the connection, I think, that’s the twist. It’s like the consequences of colonialism, the consequences of contact, of when those first white men saw people of color all over the world, every single space colonized where there are Black and brown people, and now even poor whites, it’s the same story. It’s the same story. Even right here, this beautiful place is considered the poorest country in the world, Malawi. My goodness, it’s so rich, but the extraction is already evident to the point where locals, for example, will go down to the beach to extract sand because that’s the only thing that they have access to, and to can generate an income for their families.
Saul and Anisia: Wow.
The film that you’ve made is so profound. There are so many issues, I think, that your film brings to light. And so, how do you see that translating to the ordinary person who’s swamped with distractions by these algorithms on Facebook, forces pushing consumerism, individualism, pornography, and all of this? How do you see yourselves using this film to transcend that?Saul: When you work out physically or if you get hurt, a trainer will tell you that you have to build your core. That if you work on your core, then you can trust that you’re going to move from the right place, breathe from the right place, not strain your back, not hurt your legs. If you’re moving from your core, if you solidify your core. When I think of all of the influx of information that is tempting in so many ways, whether for young people or us, that, as you put it distractions, which in many ways could also be connections if they weren’t distractions, all of these things, right? We have to find a way to solidify our sense of self and awareness to be able to discern and move about in a solid way.
So, Neptune Frost, I think the goal of a film like that is to build the core. It’s to build the core, especially those of us who are on the first layer of intention for this film, which is to say people who look like us, people who come from the global majority, who are subject to the realities that we’re illustrating in the narrative, but also for those who are on any side, it’s to build the core so that when we face all of those different layers of distraction and what have you, we can move through them with a kind of grace that allows us to stay focused on what’s important and to make connections between, how we carry ourselves through this, right?
Because there are a lot of questions that people have, which is just around survival, right? We might think that we need certain things to survive, but those of us living in the core of the Empire, for example, you know, we can make a lot. We can have a lot of effect by realizing that we don’t need certain things, but you know, whether that’s through boycotting, divesting, or sanctioning in our personal lives. Like, I don’t go to that store anymore because they invest in this. I don’t do that anymore because I changed my habit. I stopped getting stuff from there. stopped ordering from this company because I don’t like the way that company is, the impact they’re having on the planet. All of this stuff, that type of discernment, people will throw around words like sacrifice. I don’t even think that’s a sacrifice to me. It’s just become more difficult when it’s connected to things that we swear by, like I love this, coming though. I can’t, I can’t start my day without this brand of this thing or whatever that is. So there has to be a level of discipline as we approach this, this being that which is coming to a head. The fact that we will all need to combine our forces in order to overpower that global minority that is fixated on exterminating us in the simplest term, exterminating or exploiting.
Absolutely
There has to be; we need all of these things. We need the Ibrahim Traore’s as much as we need, you know the garbage workers that are on strike in Philadelphia, as much as we need the people who work at the airport in France who decided yesterday that they’re not going to put Israeli weapons on planes, as much as we need the students who walk out of their classes and say if the school does not divest, as much as we need. We need all of those different factions to play their part. And we need less people who think that there is a disconnect. There is no disconnect. You know, like you say, people, there where you are in Malawi, like having only access to sand or what have you, like these resources that could be…
Anisia: Nuanced.
Saul: Fuel our growth as communities and as humanity itself, they have for too long fallen into the wrong hands. And we have simple ways of projecting this, but we’ve also learned that the wrong hands, it’s not just because someone looks like us that we can trust them. So there’s a lot of…
Bain Oui!!! Ofcourse.
Saul: Unfortunately, you know, there’s all of that. So we just need to build that core so that we, can become less fascinated by nonsense, less trivialized by nonsense, and continue on the path that realizes that. That has been handed to us, already done stories and answers that have already done a great deal of work. They left books, they left stories, they left breadcrumbs, they left all this stuff like the struggle. People think that the struggle is completed in a lifetime, but we have to carry on that struggle, and when we talk about decolonialism and all that, like, yes, their program from the West, they kind of fixed themselves. They said ,Oh, okay, you want to have your own presidents that look like you, okay, okay. But we have this thing called the IMF; we have the World Bank.” People are coerced, so we have to fortify ourselves in ways that allow us to say no and be careful.
Anisia: Being less polite and realizing that anything, any voices, like we say, “petit à petit on est les grands”. It’s like, voice. The smallest thing is your voice. And if you can find that voice through films, through music, through anything, through talking, speaking with your neighbor, through having a conversation, a difficult conversation with anyone in your family, in your political circle, or whatever. I think the voice is also at the center of this all. Yeah, there is a very noticeable way in which the powers are willing to silence us. I think there is a big emphasis on silencing. And so when you understand that, if we are at that point, where the power, the only resort they have is to silence you, you realize that your voice has a certain value and has a certain power. So I think that also helps people build that core, but also to find that voice to project it out.
Saul: And she says that, and I’m thinking about the work that we were doing, I guess now it’s 25 years ago when we were, spreading the idea around Slam and, you know, inspiring young kids to like reconnect with this ancient art form of poetry and to find their voices. All of these things, all of these different things have been to kind of fuel what we’re going to need in this moment.
Yes, then it’s like there’s a collective initiation that’s happening in the sense that the calling is for everyone. And the comedy about it is that it’s Bakhtinian, grotesque, and we are being pushed to respond to the call right now, with the grotesque comedy that has a total disconnection with planet Earth, as well as that colonizer collective who believe that the Earth belongs to them. So I just think it’s really interesting how we have the resources and are being pushed to take action. We now know who the forces that were are and how they’re going to continuously manipulate and change the goalposts. And that’s the illusion that I think is being shattered by many corrupt administrations around the world that we are dealing with right now. Here we are, Marcus Garvey’s dream. You’ve got Africans, African-Americans, Africans in Guadaloupe, Africans in Belize, running to Africa and coming to resettle here. I think that’s the inspiration as well, that we are back to the spiritual, where there are other forces that are going to help heal and resolve this thing. Because, like in our Barotse proverb, “If you want to know the end, look at the beginning.” It’s fascinating.
So, without giving the end, telling me the end of the film, tell me what’s the takeaway?
Saul: Well, the takeaway is kind of what we’ve been discussing, which is the fact is that we are the technology. People say they invest all these ideas into technology, but there is nothing more advanced than us when we connect with each other, with our core, with our creative expression, with our imagination, with our dreams of the world that we hope to see. When we connect these things, I don’t mean this to be metaphorical; it’s true. I mean, like there’s no computer that has the ability… I can smell the flowers outside, I hear the insects, I sense the proximity to Anisia, I have a million ideas in my head stored, and I’m communicating to you at the same time, I’m moving my hands as I speak, all of these things, this is computation. So when I say there’s nothing more advanced, no, no, no, I’m serious. There’s nothing more advanced.
There’s no computer that can do what I’m doing right now. I have songs in my head just like my phone does, but I can recall them randomly. I have shuffle. I have all of those things. There’s nothing they can do. If I can pour water on this computer; it’s dead. By pouring water on me, more life. It’s more life. So even the things that kill the computer don’t kill us. They feed us. So the closer we come to the realization of the role that we play in relation to this technology, and we take our proper place in the center of it and when I say we, I mean the global majority. When we take our proper place in the center of it, we have to remember that all of these things should be really clear.
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The word robot, like when we talk about AI and all of this stuff, robot comes from the Slavic language of mean slave or forced labor. As an African-American, I can tell you that the goal of the European colonizers in the 14th through the 1800s, 1900s, when they were pulling us from the continent, was to turn us into robots, as much as it was to turn us into slaves. They stripped us of our humanity, of our culture, from our language, and all of this stuff to make us operate like robots in a field, picking whatever crop they determined was important. It’s the same thing now with people like Elon Musk who imagine that they can implant, (our intelligence)in an actual robot, but it’s still the same discussion. It’s about the exploitation of labor. So the realization that we could have technology that heals, there’s technology that heals. There’s things that we can be exploring that cure cancer, that aid society in ways that bring us closer, like now, how we’re communicating. There’s ways in which technology can be that, can have more grace than harm. And we have to explain.
Anisia: It’s less profitable.
Saul: Yeah, it’s less profitable, but it’s more important. Just like the choices we made in the film to not make the film in English, our producers tell us, ..“it’s less profitable”, but it was more important. You know, “Why don’t you have a famous person in the film?” It’s less profitable, but “it’s more important”. It’s more important for you to see these faces. It’s more important for you to hear this language. It’s more important that this message not be obstructed by any sense of finance in the bottom line. It’s more important that it reaches you in its imagined state, in its purest state. That’s more important. And so we have to have that balance between what they deem is important, which is the bottom line. It doesn’t take a lot of work to imagine what they deem as important, what is important, we make it. If you’re thinking the same way, then question yourself. Just question yourself so that you are not aligned with the masters and their teachings. You know, it’s just that we have to think that when we talk about power, we’re also talking about the layers and levers of importance, what we deem important or not. You know, how many views did I get? Is that important? All of these things. How many hearts did we reach?
Right. Here’s my last question. The Afrofuturistic elements, because there is a disconnect in terms of ethos, where a Western mind is consumed with the messianic trope, is consumed with the future being about collapse and apocalypse, right? But what I find so beautiful about Afrofuturism is that it’s projecting a better future. Do you see this film as being part of that vision?
Saul: We could. I would just point us to, you know, what a good friend of ours, Nima, has called Afro-presentism, which is to say that it’s not only our ideas of a projected future, but many of these things that we express when we abstract coloniality from our thinking have existed. There’s nothing more futuristic than polyrhythm and our relationship to our own spiritual mythologies and how that feeds our lives. That’s on the continent and throughout the diaspora.
It’s true that the colonial imagination does a lot of projection in the form of calling it science fiction or imagination, which, in simplest terms to means that when you look at white science fiction, you’ll see that a lot of times they’re projecting this idea of aliens coming from outer space to enslave and colonize us. And you go, okay, you mean Europeans coming from, and like, you’re just projecting your fears that what you did, will be done. That’s not imagination. And so it becomes important for us to escape that as well in our creative work in order to envision how do we extract coloniality from the imagination itself? So Neptune Frost is certainly a part of that discussion of projected realities that are divorced from the constant and perpetual propaganda of what space age or modernist or technological know, science fiction thinking is supposed to reflect. I could never personally understand why, on one hand, people would refer to the idea of aliens as higher intelligence, but then make stuff like Star Wars. And I was like, I couldn’t understand if it’s higher intelligence, then why is there so much violence? In my conception of higher intelligence, it would heighten the possibilities of love, not the gravitas of violence. And so it’s always been this weird game that’s been played. And a lot of times we’ve been kind of propagandized in this way of thinking, you know, where the U.S. imagination is projecting its fears onto China and Russia and Iran and all of these.
Everybody is an enemy.
Saul: Yes. Projections. But every accusation is a confession, is what you say, right? Every accusation is a confession.
Anisia: I say that also for me to qualify that a film filmed on the continent, in Rwanda, as Afrofuturism came a little bit from the outside because and then I’m like, it is just a confirmation that yes, the future is definitely on there on the Continent. That’s how it is perceived, and it’s correct. So I’m like, okay, because maybe we often associate those places with a timeline that is misrepresented, etc. And the reality of those places, as you are in Malawi, I guess you feel it, the reality is that it is the future. It’s clear.
Saul: It’s clear. There’s no question.
Thank you so much. We could talk for hours. It’s been so lovely to do a deep dive. One of our producers had written a review of the film, a very short review. And so when the opportunity came to interview you, I was like, oh no, you can’t just write a tiny review with these two. You know, there’s a lot going on that has to be deconstructed and also put out there so that it encourages other people to sort of put on their intellectually spiritual hats to be able to think through this current scenario that’s been going as you say, as you as you both say for a long time. But I just want to say thank you so much, and you’re amazing.
AfroPoP is executive produced by BPM Executive Director Leslie Fields-Cruz and WORLD (at GBH) Executive Producer Nina Chaudry. Denise A. Greene is the series producer/director, Carol Bash is the series co-producer/director, and Ashton Pina is the series writer.
The series is presented with the generous support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
To find out more about AfroPoP, visit https://worldchannel.org/show/… or https://blackpublicmedia.org/a….
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
ABOUT BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA:
Black Public Media (BPM) supports the development of visionary content creators and distributes stories about the global Black experience to inspire a more equitable and inclusive future. For 45 years, BPM has addressed the needs of unserved and underserved audiences. BPM-supported programs have won five Emmys, 10 Peabodys, five Anthem Awards, 14 Emmy nominations and an Oscar nomination. BPM continues to address historical, contemporary, and systemic challenges that traditionally impede the development and distribution of Black stories.
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WORLD shares the best of public media in news, documentaries, and programming. WORLD’s original series examines the issues and amplifies the voices of those often ignored by mainstream media. The multiplatform channel helps audiences understand conflicts, movements, and cultures from around the globe. Its original work has won two Peabody Awards, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, an International Documentary Association Award, a National News and Documentary Emmy Award, two Gracie Awards, and many other awards and nominations. WORLD is carried by 203 member stations in markets representing 78.63% of US TV households. Funding for WORLD is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. WORLD is produced by GBH in partnership with WNET and is distributed by American Public Television (APT). Find out more at WORLDChannel.org.
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PBS Plus is a syndicated programming service for public television stations, supplementing the primetime, daily news, and children’s content in the National Program Service, providing series and specials intended for various dayparts. All PBS member stations, reaching all available national TV households, have access to PBS Plus content. Annually, stations are provided with approximately 500 hours of programming via PBS Plus.
PBS Plus series and specials range from “how-to” programs such as This Old House and food series such as Somewhere South to topical news and information programs and arts and cultural shows such as Austin City Limits and The Caverns Sessions.