Field Niggas
2014 · 5m · USA
Directed by Khalik Allah
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A preview excerpt from Allah's 60-minute documentary constructed from observational footage and interviews with people experiencing poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction on 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem at night — a sustained act of witness that refuses sociological framing.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The New York Times, Guardian, and Village Voice all marked Field Niggas as exceptional; Allah's sustained-portrait methodology — rooted in both street photography and observational documentary — produces work that belongs to a rigorous tradition of socially urgent cinema.
Khalik Allah's sustained nocturnal close-ups in Harlem refuse every sociological reflex available to documentary. This is the real article — even the preview makes the case.
Khalik Allah's five-minute preview of his Harlem night-portraiture project — sustained close-ups that refuse sociological framing and just hold space for faces on 125th & Lex. Even as an excerpt, the gaze is the whole argument.
Reviews
powerful... so beautifully constructed that nothing in it ever seems obvious
gorgeous and achingly sad
the most striking sort of urban portraiture
Festivals
- True/False Film Festival 2015