Joseph Tunes In with Vital Film Experience: ‘BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’

Cinema | February 24th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

Of the sixteen features I saw during the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, none left as big an impression as filmmaker/artist Kahlil Joseph’s astonishing “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions.” Behind-the-scenes controversy, documented more thoroughly elsewhere, confirms the kind of drama worthy of a movie plot — the film was briefly removed from the schedule, only to return at what seemed like the last minute following a buyout by Rich Spirit and BN Media (the movie was originally handled by A24 and Participant). No matter what maneuvers were happening out of the public eye, the world premiere of the film substantiated its power and justified a grateful sigh of relief that we were able to see it. “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is one of the best films of 2025.

Joseph, a veteran music video director known for collaborations with Flying Lotus, Kendrick Lamar, FKA Twigs, Shabazz Palaces and Beyonce, spoke during the post-screening Q&A about the movie as a metaphorical mixtape or album with individual tracks that ultimately cohere into an overarching conceptual framework. Joseph also expressed hope that the movie would eventually be available to watch at no cost to the viewer. Along with Joseph, eight artists are identified for featured contributions to the movie. Additionally, Joseph shares writing credits with Sheba Anyanwu, Kristen Adele Calhoun, Madebo Fatunde, Irvin Hunt, Elodie Saint-Louis and Saidiya Hartman. In other words, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is a seriously stacked collaboration.

So what else is “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” and how will audiences grapple with it? In the Sundance program notes written by Shari Frilot, the movie is identified as an extension of the installation project Joseph first introduced in the New Frontier section of the 2020 festival. Frilot goes on to describe the movie as “A boldly inventive feature film, firmly rooted in an encyclopedic survey of a people manifesting a generative world history that sidesteps empire … “ Currently, the brief and perfunctory Wikipedia article about the movie describes it as a drama, but that reductive limitation is laughable in light of the film’s deep and sprawling vision.

Hardly classifiable as merely a drama, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” is closer to a personal essay, combining photographs, video clips, and multimedia elements with the fictionalized story of an undercover journalist traveling on a technologically advanced ocean liner called the Nautica. That storyline makes room for the viewers to breathe. With dazzling experimental leaps, Joseph also presents entries, complete with page numbers, from “Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience.” Originally conceived by W. E. B. Du Bois and ultimately brought to multivolume fruition decades later by editors Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Kwame Anthony Appiah, the articles combine with the movie’s other pieces to announce what Frliot calls “ … seminal insight into the distinct phenomenon of what it means to occupy a state of being intoxicated with freedom.”

Needless to say, the phenomenal imagination of a work arguing for a more complete American and world history sparks with urgency. It was essential yesterday, is essential today, and will be essential tomorrow. Joseph guards against the insidious attempt at erasure being practiced (as the popular saying goes, “in real time”) by an openly racist and profoundly misguided leader keen to dismantle Black culture and achievement. The Afro-futurism and mind-altering science fiction of “BLKNWS” should inspire anyone who engages with its unique, time-transcending wavelength.

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