Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford Graves
This portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through the artist’s lush garden and ornate home, into the martial arts dojo in his backyard and the laboratory in his basement—all just blocks from where he grew up in the housing projects of South Jamaica, Queens. Graves tells stories of discovery, struggle, and survival, ruminates on the essence of “swing,” activates electronic stethoscopes in his basement lab to process the sound of his heart, and travels to Japan to perform at a school for children with autism. Oscillating from present to past and weaving intimate glimpses of the artist’s complex cosmology with blistering performances, MILFORD GRAVES FULL MANTIS is cinema full of fluidity, polyrhythm, and intensity, embodying the essence of Graves’s music.
Up Next in Afrofuturism
-
Dark Matters
Directed by Monique Walton • 2010 • United States
Starring Sade JonesA woman obsessed with extraterrestrials and UFO sightings begins to question her own ethnic, cultural, and planetary origins.
-
The Becoming Box
Directed by Monique Walton • 2011 • United States
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a mysterious box appears in the backyard of three siblings—a portal that may offer an escape from their surroundings.
-
Public Service Announcement
Directed by Athi-Patra Ruga • 2014 • South Africa
A stunning cosmic kaleidoscope of fluorescent, pixelated nature imagery is set to a dryly satirical lesson on the totalitarian, matriarchal political structure of the fictional republic of Azania.
