BLACK MOTHER New Auteurs

With rawness and emotional intensity, director Khalik Allah weaves a rapturous dream-state of a documentary, at once a love letter to and a prayer for his family’s ancestral home of Jamaica. From lush farmland to gritty street-corners, from prostitutes to preachers, BLACK MOTHER is a lyrical tribute to mothers and the motherland — and a dismantling of colonial structures both in form and content. Using both Super-8 and HD-video filmmaking, Allah sidesteps the “Who am I?” egocentrism that defines modern visual culture and celebrates the collective, unbroken soul and determination of a people. In the process, Allah has created a work of art that is alive in a way few films dare to be. – Cedar Sherbert