FIELD NIGGAS American Independents

Khalik Allah’s FIELD NIGGAS is a stylized documentary chronicling summer nights spent at the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem. Portraiture is woven together with non-sync audio conversations with the neighborhood’s most oppressed and exhausted inhabitants, giving us a deeper sense of their dreams, regrets, opinions, arguments and observations. Allah uses his camera to shine a spotlight on subjects who are often ignored, challenging the audience’s perception of who these people are. Borrowing its title from Malcolm X’s lecture “Message to the Grassroots,” the film was shot in July 2014; the death of Eric Garner occurred midproduction. FIELD NIGGAS serves as a passionate call to rise above our social constructs and view one another simply as human beings. — Jenn Murphy