Endless Shards of Jazz For a Brutal World
Filmmaker Statement:
“Endless” is a blues monologue and lament that captures the interior world of a mysterious and immortal figure cursed with having to feed off of her own blood – haunted by both the past and the present horrors of racism within the United States. I wanted to express the weariness and sorrow felt by the rising tide of injustice in the Western world. Surreal and probing, the film renders a portrait of a soul in existential crisis, unable to reconcile her own affliction amidst a Capitalist world that will forever be alien to her.
Invoking the names of great Black revolutionary figures who fought against slavery (Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Sojourner Truth) to incur a meditative state, the film contains different parts or ‘shards’ (poems, memories, montage, dialogue) that come to grip with the internal & external forces of a system that insists on destroying African-Americans and the historically oppressed.
My first film was a ‘bang,’ now I am interested in the ‘whisper.’ “Endless” renders the necessary words, sounds and images of a haunted state of being and the inner terror they evoke. What is obscure to some, will be very clear to others…and I have been learning how to combine different elements in a cohesive way to express not a story, but a state of mind.
Formally it owes its debt to both symbolist poetry, Eastern mudras, transcendental cinema & experimental jazz compositions while carving out its own place amongst the Cinema of Dissent.” – Leroy Kangalee
New Poet Cinema, All rights reserved 2015
https://endlessshardsfilm.wordpress.com/
2015
25 minutes
RED 4K
Text - Leroy Kangalee
Camera - Eric Swain
Editing - Brennan Karem
Design - Nina Fleck
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