NEW FILM | JONZI D AND SAUL WILLIAMS “AUTOCORRECT”

The ori­gin­at­or of Hip Hop Dance Theatre Jonzi D has teamed up with anoth­er pion­eer of altern­at­ive Hip Hop expres­sion, poet Saul Wil­li­ams, to bring the short film “AUTO­COR­RECT” into being. Fol­low­ing up his 2020 film “Our Bod­ies Back” built to the words of the power­ful jes­sica Care moore, Jonzi has col­lab­or­ated with dan­cers, film­makers and musi­cians in Lon­don, New York and Kam­pala to inter­pret Wil­li­am’s satir­ic­al, pro­voc­at­ive prose.

The words and film employ spe­cif­ics of the last two tem­pes­tu­ous years and con­nects them to broad­er socio-polit­ic­al cur­rents and his­tor­ic­al con­texts. The film uses dif­fer­ent styles of face cov­er­ings, evok­ing plague masks, placed with­in twis­ted, sym­bol­ic, uncom­fort­able cho­reo­graphy and a mono­chro­mat­ic col­our scheme. The engross­ing sound­scape from Hip Hop-Jazz heavy­weight Soweto Kinch, forged of sax­o­phone and key­board clicks, helps the film craft an eer­ie, dysto­pi­an aes­thet­ic and feel fit­ting of the stranger than fic­tion times we’ve just passed through. The out­come is an inspired cri­tique of these times, cap­tur­ing the res­ist­ance to induced pan­ic that many com­munit­ies of the Black Atlantic have learned to deploy, due to a healthy sus­pi­cion of author­it­at­ive power born through per­son­al and col­lect­ive exper­i­ences of viol­ent oppres­sion by these forces. “AUTO­COR­RECT” is power­ful and timely, as reflec­tions on what has just happened and what might and should come next are ripe in lots of people’s minds.

 

AUTO­COR­RECT is part of a col­lec­tion of brand new films com­mis­sioned by Sadler­’s Wells from the UK’s most excit­ing Black artists work­ing in dance and film includ­ing Jonzi D, L’atisse Rhoden, House of Abso­lute, Akeim Tous­saint Buck, and Alethia Ant­o­nia. See the full col­lec­tion at https://sadl.rs/CommissionedbySadlers…

Cred­its:-

Loc­a­tion – Entebbe, Uganda:

Dan­cer & Cho­reo­graph­er – Abdul ‘Abdanger’ Kinyenya 

Cam­era – Jeff Semaganda 

 

Loc­a­tion – Brook­lyn, New York, USA:

Dan­cer & Cho­reo­graph­er – Drew Dollaz 

Cam­era – Keema Sladden 

 

Loc­a­tion – Cent­ral Lon­don, UK:

Dan­cer & Cho­reo­graph­er – Theo­philus O. Bailey-Godson 

Cam­era – Jonzi D 

 

Dir­ect­or – Jonzi D 

Assist­ant Dir­ect­or – Jane Sekonya John 

Edit­or – Ben Williams

Sound Design – Soweto Kinch 

Poetry – Saul Williams 

Cap­tions – Ben Williams