Field Niggas

March 1, 2016 · The Pilot Light · 7:30 p.m.

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 mid-production. — Jenn Murphy, AFI Fest

“With vast empathy and spontaneous imagination, Khalik Allah revitalizes the genre of the observational documentary and transforms several simple technical tricks into a vision of the world… The film evokes inner complexities that defy harsh circumstances with a virtually literary exaltation. The result is an intimate movie with a metaphysical grandeur, a detailed local inquiry that displays the crushing power of societal forces as well as the passion and vitality of those who endure.” — Richard Brody, The New Yorker

About the Filmmaker

Khalik Allah is a New York-based photographer and filmmaker whose work has been described as “street opera” simultaneously visceral, hauntingly beautiful and penetrative. Khalik’s passion for photography was sparked when he began photographing members of the Wu-Tang Clan with a camera he borrowed from his dad.