Neptune Frost

[asakiyume]

I just saw the Afrofuturist film Neptune Frost (2021; dir. Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman), and whoa. It's pure resistance poetry from beginning to end; it fights the gender binary; it braids pessimism and resilient hopefulness, and it's *beautiful*. The music, the colors--and the languages! Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English. Amazing.

Watch on YouTube

Here's how one review summarizes it:

When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.

It's a pretty stream-of-consciousness film, but you don't need to be able to connect all the dots to love the experience.

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

I adore Saul but have not yet seen it!

[asakiyume]

I am Ms Ignorant over here and had never heard of him before last night!

[threemeninaboat]

Niggy Tardust has never left my car from the moment it came out.

[sartorias]

Noting!

[asakiyume]

It's beautiful--you would love it, especially the music. And just watching the people move through the landscape is absorbing.

[minoanmiss]

This sounds amazing. I really want to explore more Afrofuturism for obvious reasons. How did you access the movie?

[asakiyume]

It was at a local cinema just now! ... But sadly, when I look for other showings in Massachusetts, I find that Amherst is literally the only town showing it :-\

Maybe it will get a wider release later, or maybe it will be streaming at some point. Man now I feel like a jerk, pushing people toward something that isn't available. But when I tweeted about the movie, the director followed me, so maybe I can @ him and ask if it will become more widely available at some point.

[yamamanama]

It took me a few seconds to realize that wasn't Japanese, it's stylized Latin.

[asakiyume]

Right?! It's like those emoticons made by mixing kana, Cyrillic, and Roman letters.

[ivy]

This looks amazing! Thanks for pointing at it.

[asakiyume]

It should come out on streaming soon, and if you can't see it in theaters, you should **definitely** see it then. (But if it comes to your area, even better!)