Neptune Frost(2021)
dir. Saul Williams & Anisia Uzeyman
Rwandan hackers, coltan miners, a musical uprising.
Where to watch: Criterion Channel (title page found); Kanopy via library listings; rent per earlier checks (Oct 21 log); verifyLetterboxd ↗
An Afrofuturist musical set in the hills of Burundi and Rwanda. A coltan miner and an intersex runaway meet among a collective of hackers who are building a digital uprising against a corrupt regime and the companies that profit from its mines. The film mixes song, dance, code and spirit possession, and was shot in Rwanda with a Rwandan cast.
Why it’s here
The film imagines what a resistance in the age of electronics would look like and does not pretend to be realistic. What's punk is that it builds its own aesthetic from e-waste, and takes the coltan chain behind your phone as a subject. What's pedagogical is that it asks you to read the supply chain as a political story. Pairs with Cobalt Red, and Sleep Dealer. Note: formally strange and non-linear, some viewers will bounce off it.
Where This Film Lives
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