Khalik Allah

Khalik Allah (born 1985) is an American filmmaker and photographer. His 2015 documentary film Field Niggas and his 2017 book Souls Against the Concrete depict people who inhabit the notorious Harlem corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City. His film Black Mother (2018) depicts people on the island of Jamaica. "He favours visual portraits of people on the street – filming their faces for several seconds as they pose as if for a still camera."[1] Khalik lives in Long Island[2] and is a Nominee member of Magnum Photos.

Life and work

Khalik was born in Brookhaven, New York. His mother is Jamaican and his father is Iranian.[3] He grew up in Suffolk, Long Island, New York, but moved between Queens and Harlem throughout his childhood.[4][5][6] His parents met at university in Bristol, England.[4] He is a dual Jamaican-American citizen.[7]

He started making movies at age 19 with a Hi-8 video camera.[8] His first feature film, Popa Wu: A 5% Story (2010), was a "normal, talking heads documentary" about Popa Wu, "Wu-Tang Clan's de facto spiritual advisor"[9] and a member of Five-Percent Nation. It took four years to make.[9] Khalik took up still photography in 2010.[8]

In June 2020 he became a Nominee member of Magnum Photos.[10]

Field Niggas
Main article: Field Niggas

Described by The Village Voice as "more a woozy experience you press through than an ethnographic study you watch, Khalik Allah's hour-long non-narrative street-life doc Field Niggas stands as the most striking sort of urban portraiture."[11] The film comprises observational footage of, and interviews and discussions with, people at night around the notorious Harlem street corner of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City.[12] Its subjects are predominantly African American,[11] experiencing poverty, homelessness, drug addiction,[13] and harassment from the police;[14] people with "a hunger to have their voices heard".[15] The police are also portrayed.

The film's title is taken from "Message to the Grass Roots", a public speech delivered by human rights activist Malcolm X in 1963, "extolling the spirit of rebellion among outdoor slaves."[8] The film was made in summer 2014,[16] filmed using a handheld camera. Apart from the cinematography, it includes surveillance footage of the strangulation of Eric Garner as well as the overdubbed sound of field hollers by a 1950s chain gang.[15]

Khalik released the film for free on YouTube and Vimeo in 2015 for a short time,[14] before removing it at the request of True/False Film Festival so it could show there.[9] It has since been shown on the film festival and college circuits in the US and Europe.[8][9]

Souls Against the Concrete

Souls Against the Concrete consists of Khalik's photographs of people at night around the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City, between 2012 and 2016.[14][17]

Khalik used slow speed colour film, usually intended for daylight photography, for its high contrast,[15][18] with a 35 mm SLR camera from 1971. Because of photographing at night using available light, he used a fast manual focus normal lens at a large aperture (hence the shallow depth of field).[note 1]

Black Mother

Black Mother was made in Jamaica, its subjects are holy men,[20] sex workers, beggars, hawkers and children.[1] It was made in the same fashion as Field Niggas: "visual portraits of people on the street – filming their faces for several seconds as they pose as if for a still camera" – with a soundtrack out of synch with the images.[1]

Khalik used a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH3 digital camera, and Super 8, Super 16 and Bolex film cameras.[20]

Publications
  • Souls Against the Concrete. Austin: University of Texas, 2017. ISBN 978-1-4773-1314-5.

Films

Documentary films
  • Popa Wu: A 5% Story (2010) – 1 hr
  • Antonyms of Beauty (2013) – 27 mins
  • Field Niggas (2015) – 1 hr
  • Black Mother (2018) – 1 hr 17 mins
  • IWOW: I Walk On Water (2020) - 3 hr 20 mins

Short films
  • Urban Rashomon
  • Khamaica

Music videos
  • The Razah Code Underground Hip-Hop Chapter 1

Films with contributions by Khalik
  • Lemonade (2016) – 46 mins, about Beyoncé, produced by Good Company and Jonathan Lia, premiered on HBO – Khalik was second unit director and cinematographer

See also

Notes
  1. Khalik used Kodak Portra 160 colour film,[15][18] with a Nikon F2 35 mm SLR camera and a Nikon 55 mm f/1.2 lens, at f/1.2, manually focused. He has also used Canon AE-1 and Canon A-1 SLR cameras and Contax T2 and Yashica T4 compact cameras.[19]

References
  1. Rose, Steve (31 October 2018). "Black Mother review – an epic odyssey through Jamaican identity". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2018-12-07 – via www.theguardian.com.
  2. Wilkinson, Alissa (2019-03-19). "Khalik Allah on his bold, boundary-breaking documentary Black Mother". Vox. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  3. Clark, Ashley (16 October 2015). "'Field Niggas' Shows What It's Like to Be Homeless and High in Harlem at Night". Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  4. AnotherMan. "The Man Behind Black Mother, an Epic New Film About Jamaican Identity". AnotherMan. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  5. "LI director Khalik Allah gets global attention". Newsday. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  6. Rapold, Nicolas (2015-04-17). "Khalik Allah's Movie Captures Harlem Faces and Voices by Moonlight". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  7. Andrew Chan. "Tracing the Roots of Khalik Allah's "Camera Ministry"". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 2020-06-11.
  8. Rapold, Nicolas (17 April 2015). "Khalik Allah's Movie Captures Harlem Faces and Voices by Moonlight". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-12-06 – via NYTimes.com.
  9. Rizov, Vadim. "Khalik Allah". Filmmaker. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  10. "Magnum signs five new photographers after its lack of diversity comes under attack". www.theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2020-06-30.
  11. "Lexington One Two Five: Experimental Doc 'Field Niggas' Puts You There All Night". www.villagevoice.com. Retrieved 2018-12-07.
  12. Hoffman, Jordan (15 October 2015). "Field Niggas review – hallucinatory portrait of New York street life". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2018-12-06 – via www.theguardian.com.
  13. Kenny, Glenn (15 October 2015). "Review: 'Field Niggas' Is a Meditation on Life on the Streets of East Harlem". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-12-06 – via NYTimes.com.
  14. Brody, Richard (18 January 2018). "A Filmmaker and Photographer's Urgent, Personal Portraits of Harlem at Night". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 2018-12-06 – via www.newyorker.com.
  15. Luers, Erik. ""A Documentarian Needs to be Disarming": Khalik Allah on Field Niggas". Filmmaker. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  16. "Field Niggas". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  17. Glanzman, Adam. "Meet Harlem's 'Official' Street Photographer". Time. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  18. "Khalik Allah". thephotographicjournal.com. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  19. "Could you list what gear you use besides your..." Khalik Allah. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
  20. Dazed (19 April 2018). "Beyoncé collaborator Khalik Allah discusses Black Mother". Dazed. Retrieved 2018-12-06.
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